The pets have been on the bed at the same time. Let there be rejoicing.
The Guardian analyzed 70 million reader comments and the results are gratifying, if unsurprising, to those of us who do the work of moderation:
The Guardian was not the only news site to turn comments on, nor has it been the only one to find that some of what is written “below the line” is crude, bigoted or just vile. On all news sites where comments appear, too often things are said to journalists and other readers that would be unimaginable face to face – the Guardian is no exception.
New research into our own comment threads provides the first quantitative evidence for what female journalists have long suspected: that articles written by women attract more abuse and dismissive trolling than those written by men, regardless of what the article is about.
Although the majority of our regular opinion writers are white men, we found that those who experienced the highest levels of abuse and dismissive trolling were not. The 10 regular writers who got the most abuse were eight women (four white and four non-white) and two black men. Two of the women and one of the men were gay. And of the eight women in the “top 10”, one was Muslim and one Jewish.
KLAXONNNN new bio of Buffy Sainte-Marie:
IN THE EARLY 1960s in Wakefield, Massachusetts, an introverted, musically gifted outsider named Buffy Sainte-Marie was mustering the courage to try out for her high school’s majorette squad. As one of the only Native Americans students in her school, she found the mascot, the Wakefield Warrior — a red-eyed Indian chief with a cartoonishly menacing scowl — a little disquieting, though she couldn’t help but admire the intricate, kaleidoscopic headdresses the baton twirlers got to wear. She practiced her routine diligently. In the end, though, it wasn’t enough to make the cut; the Wakefield Majorettes — like so many other things, she’d find out later — appeared to be a meritocracy but when you got up close turned out to be a good old fashioned American popularity contest.
Rembert on the fuckin’ stupid De Blasio / Clinton attempt at joking:
I thought I wanted to save Bill, until I actually heard him say it, followed by the room releasing a collective “Oh no” sigh. To be clear, the sigh was not an “Oh shit, Bill went there — that’s my nigga Bill, he’s got the juice now.” It was definitely more along the lines of “God dammit, white people,” with a pinch of “Oh, so this is how y’all talk about us when we aren’t around.”
Gathering up the evidence of Assad’s war crimes:
The commission’s work recently culminated in a four-hundred-page legal brief that links the systematic torture and murder of tens of thousands of Syrians to a written policy approved by President Bashar al-Assad, coördinated among his security-intelligence agencies, and implemented by regime operatives, who reported the successes of their campaign to their superiors in Damascus. The brief narrates daily events in Syria through the eyes of Assad and his associates and their victims, and offers a record of state-sponsored torture that is almost unimaginable in its scope and its cruelty. Such acts had been reported by survivors in Syria before, but they had never been traced back to signed orders. Stephen Rapp, who led prosecution teams at the international criminal tribunals in Rwanda and Sierra Leone before serving for six years as the United States Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes Issues, told me that the CIJA’s documentation “is much richer than anything I’ve seen, and anything I’ve prosecuted in this area.”
I sorted r/relationships by “controversial” and “all time” and have been in a Reddit hole for days now, and this man is bottom of the barrel (people recognize his awfulness, bc r/relationships is really pretty decent in terms of readership):
For some background, we’ve been together for roughly 2 years, living together for a little over 1. We used to split all costs evenly (rent, utilities, gas, groceries whatever) until I got into a car accident around our 1 year mark. I was out of work for a few months and after my recovery it was too stressful to go back to work full time and I felt happier only working weekends. My girlfriend has always worked 40hrs + some overtime here and there because she loves her work. Now I still make enough to cover my share of rent, but that’s it. I feel like she resents me for it since she has to pay for everything else but she can afford it at this point and I can’t. I understand it’s difficult for her and I try to make up for it by sometimes bringing her things she likes like her favorite candy here and there and just little things I can.
And before anyone says ” Communication blah blah talk to her. I HAVE. And it’s the same thing every time. It’s mainly about chores and with the added resentment from our pay differences…It’s just an uphill battle.
I’ll admit I was spoiled growing up, I never had to do much but I grew up with my dad working to support the family while my mom took care of all cooking, cleaning, house up keep whatever. So it’s not that I don’t want to do them, it’s more of I CAN’T or if I do try something it’s done the wrong way. So I never really do chores on my own but the thing is if my girlfriend asks me to do something. I WILL. When I can. The problem is when she asks she wants thing done right then, and different things bother us. A pile of clothes on the floor doesn’t irk me. It could sit there for a week, whatever as long as I have clean underwear, I’ll get to laundry when I run out of my clothes. My girlfriend doesn’t like clothes to get behind, she doesn’t like clutter on tables.
I spent the first four months at that company doing a lot of learning on my own. My manager (let’s call her Betty) wasn’t very involved with my training at all, always claiming she had tons of work to do. Instead, she gave me lists of resources (training manuals, online certification classes, etc.) to go through, checked in with me maybe once a day, and assigned me a “starter project” so that I could “learn on the job.” So I basically taught myself everything I needed to learn, and the project I worked on was a huge success for the company. It launched about five months after I was hired. I got a raise out of it, and everyone in management seemed very happy with my work.
Once I had finished that project and the account I’d launched was doing well, I noticed some of the tactics/skills I’d used could be implemented on another account that wasn’t performing as well as the one I’d just launched. I told Betty about my plan, and she completely blew me off. Basically she told me that she “already had plans” for this account, that she didn’t need my help, and instead assigned me to another (less important) project. Needless to say, I was more than a little insulted by her attitude.
But I know that sometimes you have to push hard to get things done. I calmed myself down, and waited until the next day when Betty left for a vacation, and I went to Betty’s boss (Veronica). I walked her through the improvements I wanted to make on this other account. I was given the green light to go ahead and start that work. Clearly this was the right thing to do! I mean, Veronica wouldn’t have given me the go-ahead otherwise, right?
this is interesting but oh man what if it happens:
At the White House, the level of service can be off-putting. The Obamas found it especially difficult, at first, to get used to a staff waiting on them hand and foot—they had, after all, only recently paid off their student loans. “If you drop something on the ground, it’s picked up before you know it,” White says. Trump, however, is used to an entourage and a high level of service, so he might be more comfortable, White says. A 10-year-old Barron Trump will be the same age as Malia Obama was when her father became president, and would likely want to be left alone, like Jenna and Barbara Bush and Chelsea Clinton before him. “They just want to be kids,” White says. Staffers say that Michelle Obama didn’t want her daughters to be able to call for butler service—if they want something out of the kitchen, she told them, then go to the kitchen yourself. It is unclear how Melania Trump would behave as First Lady, but on the campaign trail she often talks about taking care of their young son as her top priority.
meet the team whose job is to blur TV crotches:
At one desk, a 50-year-old man with gray hair and a gray goatee stared at a computer screen that displayed a fit man, completely naked, swinging from a rope, à la Tarzan. The clip played in a loop, over and over again.
At a nearby computer, a 43-year-old man scrolled through a spreadsheet, preparing for the day’s assignment.
“Boobs blur insufficient,” read one directive on the spreadsheet.
“More opaque crotch blur for him,” read another.
The experience described by Steinborn and Taylor, and many others, is what’s come to be known as “the Hum,” a mysterious auditory phenomenon that, by some estimates, 2 percent of the population can hear. It’s not clear when the Hum first began, or when people started noticing it, but it started drawing media attention in the 1970s, in Bristol, England. After receiving several isolated reports, the British tabloid the Sunday Mirror asked, in 1977, “Have You Heard the Hum?” Hundreds of letters came flooding in. For the most part, the reports were consistent: a low, distant rumbling, like an idling diesel engine, mostly audible at night, mostly noticeable indoors. No obvious source.
The story of the Hum begins in such places, far from the hustle and bustle of cities, where stillness blankets everything. That’s where you hear it, and that’s where it becomes intolerable. After it was first reported in Bristol, it emerged in Taos, New Mexico; Kokomo, Indiana; Largs, Scotland. A small city newspaper would publish a report of a local person suffering from an unidentified noise, followed by a torrent of letters to the editor with similar complaints.
Every time a man gets pegged, an angel gets its wings:
I’m a bisexual man, and I had bottomed once before with a man. We’d been dating for months at the time, and he was typically the bottom, but since I really liked him, I thought I’d return the favor. It was an all-around mediocre experience: I was too drunk, it hurt, I thought I had to pee, and I kept asking if I was pooping on him. He finally snapped, “Zach, if you shit, you shit. Shit happens.” (Pun fully intended.)
Even though I was typically a top, men I’d dated had always asked me — actually more likebegged me — to bottom. After that one not-great experience, I always declined. I had too many fears, pain being the main one. I figured it wasn’t for me.
But when my girlfriend told me how arousing she found topping, I promised I’d give it another shot. Not just for her, but for me. I figured I must have been missing something. Queer men had sworn by bottoming since the dawn of man. My gay friends told me there’s nothing more pleasurable than proper prostate stimulation. Millions of men can’t be wrong, can they? I needed to find out.
My kid is OBSESSED with this terrifying video, which is apparently very popular with Parent Twitter’s children in general, and universally loathed by said parents, please please watch it:
There’s a great “First Words” by Jia Tolentino on the commodification of female “empowerment” in the latest NYT Magazine that you guys should check out: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/17/magazine/how-em…
Also, that Redditor is exactly why we must #BanMen.
And he kept defending himself, in response to many genuine comments that were much more politely and constructively phrased than anything I could have managed. Unbelievable.
when he was like “So it’s not that I don’t want to do them..” I was like stop lying! Of course you don’t want to do chores, NO ONE does! That’s why they’re called chores! But someone has to do them!
I was incredibly impressed with the kindness of the person who talked to him about how cooking stir-fry is basically experimental chemistry with no rules and encouraged him to take baby steps and try that first.
I had a bit of sympathy for the poster at first since it sounded like he was depressed and in a terrible rut (underneath the BS excuses), but then there was a comment from him about how he and his girlfriend “both believe in traditional gender roles i.e. the woman doing most of the cooking and cleaning and chores” [without him fulfilling his end of this] and was done.
Honestly, I cannot believe that the reddit community gave actual advice. Mine would be “Yeah, bro, you are SO RIGHT, she’s probably not even around enough to actively appreciate your glory. You should leave her.”
/r/relationships is usually pretty good! besides the automatic DUMP train that often happens on there.
I laughed so hard at his assertion in the comments that he “self-medicates” for Crohn’s, and therefore can’t take medicine for his attention deficit disorder.
Did you see the comment where he said that he and his gf both “believe in traditional gender roles”?? There are not have enough eye-roll gifs in the WORLD to even address that. And the redditors, being EXTREMELY generous, pointed out that even if it were the case, right now the gf is fulfilling BOTH roles!! What?!?
The one who says that right now she is fulfilling the traditional roles of both adults, and he is fulfilling the traditional role of a child. *clapping emoji*
Oh man, I’ve been wanting to read an article like that for years! Thanks!
EDIT: I’m glad she called out that garbage Dove campaign and sorry she didn’t insult it more. Their promoted tweets are always showing up in my timeline and have never once failed to disgust me.
Happy Ben and Jerry’s Free Cone Day!
I work in Waterbury, VT, home of the Ben and Jerry’s factory, so I absolutely count this as a holiday. For the uninitiated, please know that it’s actually free as-many-cones-as-you-can-eat-day. They never ask questions if you go back for seconds, thirds, fourths…
Thank you for the reminder!
Why didn’t I get that job in vermont?
WHY
Yeah, our cost of living may be high and our salaries low, but our ice cream cups runneth over!
Truly, it is our one draw. Especially on a day with weather like today’s.
(Hola, fellow vt living person.)
I live in Wisconsin, as near as you can get to chicago, so CoL is stupid and salaries are low, but we have good cheese and beer?
As a former B&J scooper, please remember to tip the employees if you can!
I once went to the Ben & Jerry’s in the old World Trade Center, and the line was unbelievable. I lived in Battery Park City so I just hung out and waited my turn, it was some of the best people watching ever.
The second-hand embarrassment is strong with this particular AAM letter.
This is the first time, in recent memory, that the LW is way more off base than the people they have qualms with.
I kept going back and rereading the most terrible bits. This woman. How, just how could she think this was an alright behaviour??
I had completely missed/forgotten that the LW was a woman, because it seemed like such dude-like behavior.
I love when that happens, but then Alison is always so nice about it. If I were an advice columnist I would either tear people to shreds, tell them to say “go fuck yourself” to whoever they’re writing in about, or to leave their spouse no matter what the issue is. This is why I’m not an advice columnist.
I’m amazed by all the commenters who are/were speculating if the letter is fake because I’m having trouble understanding how so few of them have ever met anyone who would behave this way.
And describe their own terrible behavior so cluelessly unsympathetically.
Yeah, I feel like I can picture this person so clearly in my head. Spent five years raising children, probably described it as “the most important job” to anyone who would listen, probably spent a lot of time arguing on parenting message boards, goes back to work, has a manager who I bet you any amount of money is younger than her, doesn’t understand anything about working in an office but is positive that she knows better about everything than everybody else because for the last five years of her life that was the case, as she was hanging around with children all day…
And you just know she’s posting every detail about this debacle of Facebook so her fellow parent friends can all offer words of encouragement and remind her about how right she is.
I’m not convinced that she thinks she knows better than everyone else just because she spent a lot of time being in charge of kids…
The anecdote about her husband suggesting she sue is the part that really stands out to me, because it means he’s just as off-base as she is (since there is clearly no legal ground to stand on here), and it also means that the LW has actively chosen to surround herself with peers who encourage her bizarre behavior. So, I think it’s more than just the LW overstepping authority because she’s used to being in charge of her children.
Anecdotally, none of the people I know who have/might/would act this way have children and they’re all of varied ages, but I obviously don’t know how common this is.
I can see it as a combination of both, which means that I shudder at the thought of what it’s like to have dinner at their house. But I was also amazed at how many people thought it had to be fake because it was just too much. Where do these people hang out, that they don’t know anyone that out of touch? Because I would like to live there, please.
he’s just as off-base as she is
Yep. I bet you these people are constantly being “wronged” by people in their lives, and are NEVER at fault. The dry cleaner, their kids’ teachers, the grocery store checkout clerk, everyone. I know these people. I also know that they will describe the most outrageous bad behavior in this “aren’t I right, can you even believe it” tone of voice while you just sit there aghast, because they really don’t believe they ever do anything wrong.
Thank you for saying this! Plenty of people have a bizarre attitude toward how workplaces should function. Let’s not act like it’s because she’s a mom. Parenting doesn’t make people suddenly incapable of working at a job and behaving in accordance with professional norms.
Oh I don’t mean that being a stay-at-home-mom made her crazy and idiotic! I think she’s the kind of person who is inherently flawed and spending five years raising the kids contributed to warping her sense of power dynamics.
I have been Betty. The person in the LW’s position was young and capable of learning, so it didn’t end badly for him/her, but it was a really maddening situation for me.
Edited to fix reference to Veronica (I meant LW).
The names trigger the fake warning for me (Betty and Veronica, really?) but I agree the attitude/behavior of LW is totally feasible.
People usually make up funny names for coworkers in their letters on AAM, so that is not a factor in this one.
Ah, got it!
I thought it was, only because it reads like Jean Teasdale.
My gut clenched just reading it and I have to go look at Charlie Potato Hashbrowns to relax.
The cat’s expression says it all. “I can’t believe you got a dog,” even all these months later.
My cat’s expression usually says this, and the dog was around six years before the cat ever showed up. It’s incurable.
Mine too, and I have no dog. She is just judgemental.
After all this time? -Always.
<3
“I can’t believe the dog is STILL here.”
my cat is still trying to rescent the spots on the rug where the dogs i puppysit liked to laze…
CP Hashbrowns, vicious ball buster.
(Um, in less potato-y news, I just got two weeks notice at my job yesterday for Economic Reasons and I could use 777777 hugs if anyone would not mind)
Also, I started following you on Tumblr yesterday because I can’t get enough of your comments and CP Hashbrowns. It has already been transformative for me.
oh no I keep covering my face and giggling, that is so nice of you to say!
All the hugs!
Thank you so much!
All the hugs to you! Good luck with your search.
Thank you! I think I’m starting in a good position so hopefully it goes smoothly.
*hug*
*hug* Thanks!
A zillion hugs, and also thanks for sharing your potato with us!
Thank you and it is my absolute pleasure!
*BIG HUG* You will be OK. We are here. We are your network.
Thank you!
SO MANY HUGS oh man I’m so sorry. Wishing you a speedy and far more enjoyable new job.
Thank you, I appreciate it!
I offer you countless hugs and untold well-wishes. Also, it’s time for CP Hashbrowns to earn his keep and provide some epic-level snuggling.
yesterday after I got home from work I was trying to lie on the couch and be sad and SOMEONE naming no names decided he needed to roll around on my chest and and face and demand cuddles RIGHT THAT INSTANT
it is hard to be sad when you are laughing at your root vegetable and also being smothered
Somewhat related: my boss calls his teenage son “spud” (not bud, I asked for clarification), which is apparently short for “spudnut” (a popular American donut chain). There is almost nothing that cannot be improved by the addition of potato-based nomenclature.
“They call me…’Tater Salad.'”
He has never again been as funny as that routine, but I can’t help it — i LAUGH AND LAUGH every time at that.
Aw, that SOMEONE is a good egg. Err, potato. Hugs to you on the job sitch.
Hugs and hugs and hugs. I hope you land on your feet and show ’em what they’re missing (I’m a tad vindictive on this issue *cough*). You and your potato will be okay!
So many hugs!
*hugs hugs hugs* I hope your job search goes well! We’re experiencing the fear of layoffs here, too, so though I thankfully haven’t been laid off (yet??? idk), I’ve got the stress of waiting for the ball to drop, ugh. (Idk where you are, but I have a state job in CT, and they’re laying off a ton of people in the upcoming month or two for Economic Reasons.)
((hugs))
Best of luck finding something new!
Hugs to you, and, Mr. C.P. Hashbrowns, get to work on those tater cuddles.
How do you feel about a pile of clothes on the floor when it’s someone else’s responsibility to do laundry? Yeah, that’s what I thought.
Yeah, the boy will occasionally complain (just yesterday he joked “did some sort of explosion happen in the closet?”, and that sometimes serves as a good reminder, but as long as I’m the one doing the laundry, he doesn’t get to whine more than that
As long as someone is equally bothered by messes when it’s their job to clean them, I’m okay with that. As soon as men get expected to take on housework it’s all “oh, men just aren’t bothered by messes like women are.” It’s like no explanation other than gender essentialism occurs to them.
Yeah, and you notice all the ‘Men don’t see the details like women do!’ never applies professionally. No one’s saying ‘Oh, men can’t handle the sciences or policework, they just don’t see the little things!’ But somehow at home, they’re suddenly incapable.
My goodness, I am so blessed with GentlemanX. I am _way_ worse about laundry than he is. Generally, on the weekends, I wander the house hollering “GentlemanX, can you PLEASE stop leaving your bras just wherever you take them off? Honestly. THEY HAVE A HOME”. Note – GentlemanX in no way wears bras.
I am that way with cardigans. It’s a good thing I have a lot of them, because they’re spread all over the house (and I’ll occasionally find one at the bottom of a bag I haven’t used in a while, too)
But that is totally reasonable – what if you get chilly and need a cardigan? Boom, cardigan, at your fingertips.
I’m literally never gonna be like “you know, I feel too comfortable. Time to put that bra back on!”
I took my bra off at work yesterday! #livingthedream
NB it is not my job to take any clothes off and my job comes with the usual social pressures to not be ~*~nipples ahoy~*~ but I am a pretty small boobed person
I’m so envious!
I had my most minimising bra on yesterday, but when the courier came to pick up parcels, he was on the phone to a colleague and I heard, “she’s got enormous boobs!” in a stage whisper. I pointed out that I could hear his side of the conversation and made him blush though, so I did get to embarrass the poor guy! 😀
Good for you!
That is really gross of him. I’m glad you didn’t just let it slide, or let it get to you.
Jealous. Face. I could never, but only because I, like the girliestgirl, already have issues with dudes staring at my tits. THEY AREN’T EVEN THAT GREAT, YOU GUYS.
Well one dude did make a sexually-disgusting comment at me on my way out of the building. “Oh no I knew i should have kept my bra on!” I thought. And then realized “oh wait he was talking about my ASS never mind then”
Correct. No one has ever said that. Bras are the worst.
I am likewise blessed. Mr. MissMushkila just designated a home for my bras (it is not in a drawer, don’t be absurd – I mean like a consistent place to toss them), because I manage to throw them in unique places every day and then I can’t find them when I need to get dressed the next day.
We live in a 1 bedroom apartment, I don’t know how I manage to hide them from myself so well. Pretty sure it’s a an unconscious ploy to never have to put it on again.
(I’m pretty good at putting things back in a designated place if someone else decides what that place is, but on my own I would just wander around in a fog of randomness, tripping on piles of my own clothes.)
In an effort to get myself to stop throwing my bras on my floor, I am getting rid of my dresser (that doesn’t really fit my enormous bras anyway) and going with a chain of hangers on the wall like so: https://artsyarchitette.wordpress.com/2012/07/28/…
Bras count as wall art, right?
I call it “Brart”
That’s why “I don’t see dirt” makes me all snarly. What they’re really saying is, “That dirt is not my responsibility.”
I read a really great bit from a dude what cohabited with many dudes + 1 lady, said lady was constantly battling with them over cleanliness. Their response generally was “you want it clean, you clean it”. She managed to frame this as oppressive – since THEIR standards were the ones that mattered, therefore she had to either live with their nasty or clean, or do more housework, even though everyone “appreciates” the clean space.
It was a great piece, and although I read it a million years a go, i am sure it still exists somewhere, but not even all of my googlefu can find it again 🙁
“I see dirt, but have made the active decision not to care about it.”
I had (female) roommates that did this to me. I didn’t handle it well BUT thankfully we all realized we weren’t meant to live together and are still friends. I live in fear of this happening with a long-term romantic partner.
My most successful romantic relationships have been those in which we had separate bathrooms.
That statement in the OP made me so mad. Like, if you love someone, maybe you’ll try to make them more comfortable in your home? My husband is comfortable with a bit more mess than I am but he knows I dislike clutter and so he picks up after himself/cleans things when he knows I’ll be bothered by them. I do the same for things he likes to be a certain way in the house. It’s common courtesy!
that. reddit. thread. I’m going to go read that Metafilter thread about emotional labor another hundred times and then send it to that awful, awful guy.
Guys, it’s way too early in the morning, so I totally read that as “every time a man gets pregnant, an angel gets its wings”
that, or I’ve been on the Internet too long
(also apparently Buzzfeed has added “mpreg” to its official style guide and that makes me happy)
Oh, if a man gets pregnant, some angels are DEFINITELY getting their wings.
Some pigs too.
Trans men do! I know quite a few. (Rhyming!)
I was going to post that Guardian article if it wasn’t here. So interesting. I am always on the Guardian, and am often really disappointed with the quality of the commentariat. There’s a weird range of Drudge Report people who come to argue with the liberals, and super snooty pseudo-intellectuals who seriously try to convince you that, e.g., Ian McEwan is in fact a sub-standard writer in the same league as Dan Brown or EL James. And poor Jessica Valenti gets the most abuse I’ve ever seen hurled at one journalist, and I’ve never been able to figure out why. And this from a website that clearly cares greatly about creating a good environment for discussion. 🙁
I stick to the Toast now if I want actual beneficial human contact.
Jessica Valenti is such a trooper for putting up with the shit she gets.
Honestly, the commenting world of the internet is so damn depressing sometimes, and I’m so thankful for The Toast.
I have nothing against Jessica Valenti, but her articles are mostly click bait. Its a deliberately hyperbolic headline that will rile up the MRAs and usually a very short top level article without much analysis or historical context or anything interesting (I get that its an opinion piece but like… there’s no meat to it).
Nothing she’s written has changed my world or struck me as remarkably good or bad. That’s part of why the vitriol is so confusing. She gets it from left and right. I’d be a hermit by now, if I were in her shoes.
At times I’ve read the headlines and thought ‘Oh this could be good’, but the following article is so basic that I’m just left with a Meh feeling.
In my head I think of JV Guardian articles as ‘lipstick feminism’, which isn’t super correct, but its the kind of Taylor Swift, pop-culture ‘feminism’ that’s so in right now; saying your a feminist and believe men and women are equal and then not really thinking about it much after that, you can retweet her article and then get on with your day without anything in your life being impacted or changed in anyway (As opposed to Toast articles and various things shared here that often make me stop and think and I have to go away and work some shit out in my head because what I thought/have learned was wrong.). And because she writes for the Guardian is makes her a really visible, easy, target for all the ‘feminist haters’ out there.
Glad I’m not the only one. I have nothing against her either, and I enjoy following her on social media, but her writing leaves me pretty lukewarm.
I just stopped paying attention to her after I figured out her game. She’s good at what she does (click baity, bite sized pop-culture feminism), but its not for me and that’s fine.
Yeah, I think that’s exactly it. Her work was helpful to me when I was rediscovering my own feminism some years back, and now I don’t need it anymore.
I feel like I owe her a lot from early online feminism times, when she put my inarticulate and vague ragey thoughts into coherent (& sometimes funny!) words. But is it weird to feel like I’ve outgrown her? Like, seeing her byline doesn’t excite me at all, but I bet she’s giving a lot of readers a Feminism 101 crash course right now.
This is exactly it! I feel like she’s pretty good at outlining the basic points, but I actually got those a while ago, and now there’s nothing in her pieces that surprises me or makes me think deeper.
Yeah, this! She’s great for easing into feminism, and then at some point you graduate.
Hey team! I just saw this thread, and I don’t think that it’s a great idea to spin off a piece on writers who take a lot of crap in the comments by talking about one of those writers extensively, even if you don’t like her. Jessica has written for The Toast, and there’s no reason to have a meta-convo about her here, so let’s cool it.
If this was responding to a new piece, or something, I would let it run respectfully, but we are ONLY talking about Jessica bc she is one of the Guardian’s most attacked writers, and it seems very unkind.
You are THE BEST (Please let me do a small pet portrait for you in recognition of your mad mod skillz…I’m at [email protected] if you wanna see the goods first!)
uh i definitely do not need to see the goods first, I accept
Yay! Shoot me a 3/4 head & shoulder shot of the pet of your choosing in an email: west50east(dot)studios(squiggle)gmail. It will be sized approximately 5″x7″. Looking forward to seeing it!
POUTY SANSA IN THE BABY CHAIR
Too late! Got one just as nice, though!
Not the main point of the article obviously, but I was tickled by the observation that “Conversations about crosswords,cricket, horse racing and jazz were respectful”
There are some old guys who have struck up an internet friendship in the comments of the crossword articles on the Guardian. They tell each other about what they’re up to, when the grandkids are coming to visit etc. It’s the cutest.
There should be more of this in the world.
The comments section of the NYT’s crossword blog is primarily a chat room where about a dozen 60+ puzzlers meet to make crossword puns and discuss their lives. They all have nicknames and get worried if one of the regulars doesn’t show up for a couple days.
My heart just grew three sizes.
Oh, this is great! I read some newspaper comic strips online, and this is what the comments on the Phantom are like on their better days — just a bunch of mostly old dudes shooting the shit, complimenting the art in the comic and reminiscing about Phantom plotlines past.
If your husband doesn’t at some point buy you a skull ring so you can punch fools and leave a skull imprint like the Phantom, that will be fail.
… is this where I admit that I have owned a 3-D skull ring for like 10 years, and that I bought it for exactly this reason
(His job now is to find me a Phantom good-mark ring, for punching dudes who I want to place under my protection.)
I’m surprised conversations about horse racing stayed civil, especially on the Guardian. Most of the time any mention of horse racing or the Grand National will bring out the PETA evangelists who insist horse racing in all its forms should be banned out right. (As a horse person I have had it out with these people on more than one occasion.)
I mostly comment on the books blog, and I’ve had some wonderful conversations there. There’s still a lot of sexism on the books blog (see their current discussion of Jane Eyre for an example) but not as many of the personal, gendered attacks on commenters that you see elsewhere on the site.
I think part of the Guardian’s problem is that they allow comments on a lot of articles that wouldn’t have a comments section elsewhere. They also tend to go for clickbaity, inaccurate titles, which really doesn’t help, as you get a lot of people commenting who haven’t read the article.
My personal gold standard for comment moderation is the late, great site Television Without Pity. They had a very strict, very clear set of rules that mostly governed how you expressed yourself. You could get deleted and warned for not capitalizing, for not using full sentences, for not using phrases like “I think” to keep an argument respectful, for commenting without having watched the episode all the way through, for going off topic. You could have whatever opinion you wanted, as long as you weren’t using hate speech or being abusive, and as long as you made it clear that it was just your opinion. I loved having those rules in place; I didn’t have to worry about trolls and abuse, but I also didn’t have to worry that I would accidentally break an unwritten rule, because there were no unwritten rules.
Yes, so appreciative of the moderation of the comments here! As gets said semi-regularly (and always deservedly), this is one of the few websites I visit where the comments add value.
Anytime I send people a link here, I always include the phrase, “And, as always, read the comments!” Throws people for a loop (some refuse – usually writers), but when they do they end up devoted Toasties within weeks.
“Unlike many news sites, the Guardian has no plans to close comments altogether. For the most part, Guardian readers enrich the journalism.. the majority are respectful and many are wonderful. A good comment thread is a joy to read – and more common than the ‘don’t read the comments’ detractors believe.”
Many are wonderful, a joy to read – yes, as we all know, for the Toast it is true! I am so grateful to the moderators here. And each day I treasure the welcoming and clever lot of you 🙂
I think Jessica Valenti has become a named focal point for certain loose aggregations of internet turds — they show up less because of what they hate about Valenti and more as a public display of their Resistance to Feminazism (TM).
A lightening rod for douchnozzles if you will.
well, maybe, except lightning is a natural phenomenon that generally hits high objects randomly; some of these douchenozzles seem like they’ve specifically organized against her
She’s intersected here and there (sometimes problematically) with other things the MRAs hate (BLM, opposition to GamerGate, etc.), so maybe that’s why? Like, she ends up in a lot of conversations and so seems representative of everything they try to align themselves against, maybe? I don’t know, this is just armchair analysis and probably wrong.
yeah it’s like that, or what they do with Lindy West. Like, if you go to the MRA boards or whatever, or talk to an MRA dude (don’t do that, for god’s sake), they all know Jessica Valenti’s name. I think it’s less to do with what she writes and more to do with how the MRA boards have purposefully set her up as being representative of militant feminism.
Which is NOT to say, obviously that women and feminist don’t receive outsize harassment in comment sections; I just think that Valenti in particular was set up to be persecuted because she was a conveniently visible feminist at a time when the MRA turds were looking for effigies.
I think it’s more that she was very visible when there were far fewer very visible internet feminists, so they latched onto her then and haven’t let go.
I wouldn’t be surprised if other writers who were very visibly feminist on the internet during the same time period were also still getting more vitriol than one might expect.
The Guardian article talks a lot about the impact on journalists but not a lot about the impact on moderators, or even who the moderators are. They do have a pretty massive FAQ about it here! I can see why they’re going for anonymity and all that but ugh, what a job, the burnout/turnover must be awful even at a decent employer that takes it seriously.
Nikki and I talk about this a lot, bc we’re the ones who moderate, and it does take a toll. I am more and more stony in my indifference, but I also do not write very personal things, and these are not unconnected.
I totally appreciate y’all’s transparency on that stuff, here and on twitter, and about other aspects of running the site/making it a decent place to hang out – I know one of those posts was the thing that finally nudged me to actually start giving $ to the Toast!
I can’t imagine doing that work for something as massive and mainstream as the Guardian, and I’m really curious how the mods approached that “do we have comments at all?” question.
Moderators deserve a public holiday.
Last week I was doing this weird work assignment that required reading short answer responses from a survey taken by home school parents. Most of it was totally fine but there were 3 or 4 respondents who kept saying stuff like “I don’t want to teach my kid about Hispanics or Islam; we’re white”, or “School would just teach my kid about evolution and other lies” or (the worst) “Schools spend too much time talking about white people who did bad things, and never bring up Irish slaves or Native Americans who kept slaves. It’s a conspiracy”! I was the only person to read these, and they weren’t even directed at me, but each one made my blood pressure rise significantly. Moderators are like shock absorbers that make the ride more comfortable for the rest of us in the car; you take all the rough patches and make sure no one else experiences them. All this is a long-winded way to say thank you and omg I don’t know how anyone does it all the time.
Omg not that Irish slaves crap again. When did that become a Thing among racists?
For the last few years, my work has been going through a ‘progressing women’ thing. For the most part it has been relatively harmless, with the occasional positive outcome, but there are still the occasional hold outs.
At one point we did a survey of the approximately 30 people in my division, asking them about how they thought we were going and where we should be focusing our efforts. Again, fairly blandly positive responses, except for one that just went full blown MRA with his answers.
I was shocked at how much it upset me to read. I thought my online experience had given me a certain amount of immunity to MRA trolls, but this guy was just so angry . And he worked in my division! And because he was one of the people who answered anonymously, I had no idea which one he was. It really shook me up in a way I wasn’t expecting.
I can only imagine what it would be like to have to read that kind of stuff all day as a responsibility of your job, instead of a set of comments you can mock and ignore when it gets too much.
<3 I hope your stony indifference protects you from terrible people forever. Thank you for the excellent moderating!
I hope you get some joy out of publishing the worst of them and seeing an army of clever women take them apart at least.
Just want to say thank you guys SO MUCH for moderating with an Iron Fist. I so appreciate that you don’t just screen out the obvious, low-hanging fruit (abuse, blatant trolling) but also for comment quality. The Toast has the best comments section on the interwebs and it is due to your excellent efforts. If the small glimpse we see when you share deleted comments is any indication, you are truly holding back the horde.
I read comments on internet articles sometimes, and it helps keep me from taking our lovely editors/moderators for granted. Toastmods, you are truly doing the Lord’s work.
I just recommended the library buy a few copies of a new compilation of Buffy Sainte-Marie’s music. I had no idea she was from the same town I grew up in! I did not go to high school there, but the Wakefield mascot is terrible and should be changed.
I got so concerned reading that because Buffy is a TREASURED CANADIAN ICON so how could she be from Massachusetts? So of course I ran to wiki and she was adopted by a Massachusetts couple, who I’m sure were white and this was part of the long tradition of ripping native kids away from their families and homes. Anyway, she is Canadian, I’m calm again.
The article says her adoptive mom was of Micmac (Mi’kmaq?) descent, though it sounds like she didn’t bring it up much. & based on the name, I’d guess the father’s family were French-Canadians who came down to work in the New England factories, but that’s wild speculation based on what I know of Wakefield’s immigration waves. (ETA or Acadians who moved down from Maine, I guess, which would be a few generations further back)
It also says later on that the Nixon administration pressured radio stations to stop playing her songs, so that’s one of the reasons she became so beloved in Canada and had success in the rest of the world, but fizzled out in the States & didn’t achieve the canonization of Joni Mitchell or Bob Dylan, even though she started out in the same scene.
That video??!?
It’s just… why? Why the musical break in between fingers, why the lyrics, is this sort of mnemonic in another language? Is there some story yoou tell afterwards like okay we’ve established the dramatis personea now this little piggy is going to the market?
why is it so loong.
just everything about it is inexplicable.
Also I’m pretty sure that’s Nala and not Sarabi, and shipping her with Mufasa is just… wrong…. and Timon as “sister”?
I never thought I’d see any children’s programming worse than Caillou. I was wrong.
What if I told you there are like eleventy billion of those on youtube? And much weirder ones as well? There’s a whole genre of videos where a completely silent person (off-camera) puts a baby doll in a toy bathtub and then ‘bathes’ them with gumballs or skittles. D: My toddler is enraptured by them, but they creep me tf out for some reason.
Oh yeah, the Spiderman finger family, the one with peppa pig’s family dressed up as star wars characters (Suzy sheep is baby finger as r2d2, peppa is Darth Vader), the one where everyone is human but every two fingers there’s a dance break where they do a little dance while holding up their fingers which means brother finger rocks out while flipping you the bird… I could go on all day with this weird shit.
There is some Pied Piper shit going on here, because I watched it, and while I was having paroxysms of terror, the baby started kicking.
Also now it’s in my head! AUGH
I watched it and am now regretting it because that stupid song is stuck in my head.
Right?! I can’t even handle how the heads start bobbing at the same rate/beat and then some how get out of sync after a few moments.
The Bristol Hum! God bless my weirdo hometown.
I am similarly not surprised that Kokomo, Indiana was mentioned. If you told me one town in the midwest had fallen victim to the Hum, I’d say either Laurel, Indiana; Swisher, Iowa; or yeah, Kokomo. I’m sure there are others, of course, but it doesn’t surprise me in the slightest.
Swisher, Iowa! I drive past there erry day!
I can’t wait to read that redditor’s followup complaint in a few months about how sick his mom is of his shit.
This is a perfect comment.
RIGHT? All the comments that read along the lines of “you… don’t know how to cook so you don’t try? What about when she leaves you? Are you just going to die on a street corner covered in your own feces?” were not particularly helpful but made my heart smile a tiny, smug smile.
“My GF makes nearly all the money and I don’t care enough to do chores correctly, which would maybe relieve some of the tension I may be projecting. If only somebody could come up with a solution that involves me not changing at all and confirms I’m doing nothing wrong!”
Also, I’m jealous of Nicole’s dog/cat progress. My cat has hung out in the basement for 11 years (ever since we got our first dog). That dog recently passed away so now she comes up and hangs out in the kitchen because she’s less afraid of our two remaining, smaller dogs. Still, we’d love to be able to hang with all three on the couch.
I can’t believe this dude “If she would just ASK me to do some chores on my 5 days of free time where I do nothing, I might do some of them, if they’re not beyond my capability of a spoiled child to understand, then maybe, if I feel like it, eventually!!”
bet he wonders why his girlfriend doesn’t feel like fucking him anymore
I’m really concerned about one day somehow ending up with a dude who pulls shit like this, i.e. doesn’t do chores unless he’s explicitly asked/begged, and when he does them, does them purposefully bad, so he isn’t asked again
I’m not because I WAS this girl at 19 haha 🙁 no one is ever pulling that shit with me again
There are some dudes who are not meant to be coupled off and require safe environments full of entitlement and dirty socks in order to thrive. Should you encounter one it’s okay to release it back into the wild. It will be fine.
This is why I don’t want to live with male housemates anymore, unless I know them really well and their gender politics are really good.
Tricky part is you can’t really find out until you move in together.
My wife and I have found a nice equilibrium by divvying up chores based on what we’re good at, enjoy and despise doing. But if we were talking about rational actors, there would probably be no issue.
I dated a guy who not only did that, but got upset when I finally, on my day off, borrowed the neighbor’s lawnmower and mowed our front lawn. “*whine* I was going to do that, I told you.” Well, that was two weeks ago, and you’ve been home every day since then, so…
I lived with a guy once where I was like: I think the bathroom needs painting (crappy rental paint + humidity) and he was like, I don’t want to do that. So one weekend when he was out of town I bought paint and supplies and did it myself (all with my own money, ofc). He was SO mad when he came back because, “Now I feel like a jerk because I didn’t help.”
Reader, I broke up with him (for a lot of reasons; would not break up over crybaby response to bathroom painting) and painted the rest of the apartment as my “need to not think about breakup” project.
My grandad gave GentlmanX that advice (to do chores so badly i would never ask again). I responded with “O, grandad. You don’t know me very well”.
Proof that it’s a male conspiracy!
A friend of a friend is married to a guy who is… not THIS bad, but apparently they discussed having kids and she told him “if you can wake up and be productive by 10am every Saturday and Sunday for a month*, THEN we can talk about having a kid.” She doesn’t super-want kids, which is good, because this has not happened.
*might have been longer, like a couple months or a year or something, but he hasn’t made it a month either.
I haven’t read the whole thread, but I love that he says “my dad made money and supported the household, and my mom did the housework” and yet apparently CANNOT see that the logical extension of that is that he should now do the housework, as his partner is the one making the money to support the household.
And when he says it’s because they both believe in “traditional gender roles,” and everyone responds THEN YOU SHOULD BE EARNING THE MONEY DIPSHIT.
Also if you read another comment of his, he admits that he basically just sits at home and gets high all day! …For his crohn’s disease, you see.
I admittedly only have ulcerative colitis but I’m really unclear as to how weed is going to treat an autoimmune disorder. I may not like being on immunosuppressant meds but I also enjoy having a colon so…
I think that a lot of people like to believe that weed can treat everything, when all it really treats is anxiety about being chronically ill. (And a few random other things as well, of course, but that’s not the sort of patient I’m talking about.)
Here’s something I just noticed in that letter:
For some background, we’ve been together for roughly 2 years, living together for a little over 1. We used to split all costs evenly (rent, utilities, gas, groceries whatever) until I got into a car accident around our 1 year mark.
In other words, unless “1 year mark” there is supposed to refer to the one-year mark of their living together…..they only split costs evenly for the “little” part of “a little over” a year!
Oh shit, that’s a good point. So that part about splitting costs was just a blip, wow.
I bet she let him move in with her after the accident, and he swore that after this rough spot, everything would be great.
I love it when huge puppies get to the point where they’re already humongous, but they still look like puppies. Sansa is the absolute best.
To me Sansa will never be a grown dog, she’ll always be a rather large puppy
And her ears are just so FUZzY
I love /r/relationships so much. It’s one of my guilty pleasures (and USUALLY the comments/advice are pretty good). The updates are the best part. Please read the ‘my boyfriend lets his WOLVES in the house’ one!
I desperately need a link to that.
Um ditto, yes.
Same!!!
SECONDED.
It looks like the original post has been deleted but the comments are all fantastic.
I found the cached version
Oh my god.
Thank you on behalf of everyone who didn’t do what I did, which was read this yesterday (after Nicole tweeted the link to the messy man-boy post, and the wolf people were recommended in that little floating box thing) and snort out loud at this comment: “Can the wolves eat the pig and solve at least one of your problems?”
Thank you for posting it! I should have done so immediately, but I got distracted by reading Nicole’s link and then having to do real work for a bit (boo).
My work is extremely slow right now and I jumped on it because I remember reading it yesterday!
I hope there’s an update. Even when the stories are fake I love them, /r/relationships is like advice column fanfiction.
Is that a complaint? Because if it his I will happily take wolf man and all his wolves off her hands.
Right?! I assume that person just wrote in to brag.
r/relationships, r/relationship_advice, r/niceguys, r/creepypms, and r/iamverysmart are my rotation if I need an evening of delicious sympathy/cringe/schadenfreude to relax with.
oh, remember the snake one? perhaps the most horrifying thing i’ve ever read. for real douchebaggery, you can’t beat a guy who keeps exotic animals.
I’ve actually lived in a house with pet wolf. She was mostly a total sweetheart and I can say things now like “I’ve been licked by a wolf while doing yoga” and “I got pushed out of bed by a wolf trying to cuddle that didn’t really know her own size.” It worked because one of my roommates was an expert in animal behavior and not only trained the wolf, but made sure every single person that came into the house knew the rules for how to behave around her.
Which is all to say, it’s not impossible to have wolves in the house safely. But they should be talking to a trainer about how to do so safely and really, it should never have happened without a discussion first to make sure everyone would be on board with the training and rules.
Side note: this house also had a pet raccoon and the wolf and raccoon would play and it was awesome.
So, wait, this Reddit thread came up when you sort by “controversial?” Because I don’t see any controversy there. Unless the question is “did his girlfriend write this from his perspective to show him how awful he sounds?”
The controversy is between the respondents and their desks as they bang their heads down in frustration.
I haven’t been on Reddit in years, but IIRC “controversial” means “got the most upvotes and downvotes.” So there were probably a bunch of people downvoting the OP because he’s a dickweed, but then a bunch of people were upvoting the OP because that shit’s too good to miss.
Oh my God that AAM. “Betty was very quiet during this meeting. At the time I figured she just couldn’t think of how to defend her actions. Now I understand it’s because she’s even more conniving than I thought she was.” Being quiet does not mean conniving! It scares me that there are people who think like this!
That “conniving” part really put me off. I’m attacking this woman in the most vicious, unjustified way, telling her that as my manager her job is none of my business and she shouldn’t “meddle” in my work because I’m clearly better than her, and she’s the bad guy here because she…didn’t say anything and let me hang myself. I guess she was supposed to let me drag her down to my level so I could feel like the victim and make her look bad.
I thought that the writer also used some gendered pejorative terms in describing Betty and behaviour like “hissy fit” “meddle”, “conniving” that made me think that they may be some internalized sexism going on as well.
This is a great insight.
Which makes the “Betty” and “Veronica” pseudonyms sadly apt. Cheryl (I have decided that the LW is Cheryl Blossom)! You and Betty and Veronica don’t have to be enemies! Archie is not worth it!
Some of the commenters are insisting the OP must be a man because “no woman” would talk about another woman like that. It’s really pretty sad.
Oh, sweet summer children. I feel bad for them when they discover just how internalized sexism can be. 🙁
This is a very good point, from the tone of the letter, somehow I don’t see LW acting the same way if a man had been her manager.
OH, I disagree. This person is so terrible with boundaries! I would think that of most people, and certainly “hissy fit” would not have been the go-to for a dude, but the LW is so terribly, completely, unprofessional I think anyone who didn’t give raise/promotion/praise as readily as a handshake could have been a target.
I’m sure she’d be a terrible employee to anyone, and maybe it would be the same situation playing out without the ‘hissy fit’ nonsense, but she seems to not consider her manager to have any authority, and obvs generally our idea of ‘authority’ is male (sadly).
YES I noticed this too! One theory floated in the AAM comments is that it’s written by a guy and the SAHM stuff was added for either anonymity or sympathy.
I mean it’s possible but there is tons of internalized sexism especially in the workplace. There have been lots of studies about about both men and women tend to find women bosses less competent etc. This article from the Atlantic on a Pew Research survey reveals devastating internalized sexism about who women want to work with. http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/…
Alison at AAM has said that when writing she refers to everyone as female (her way of getting around the singular they or writing out he/she every time conundrum). I think she also changes some details in the letters to make it more anonymous. So it’s very possible it is a man writing.
That’s very interesting, I did not know that. Still, whether or not the writer is a man or woman I think the writer has some sexism issues.
This was all part of what made me forget that the writer was not, supposedly, male.
Also, sometimes when someone behaves in a way that you did not see coming and cannot believe you are witnessing, silence is the only response.
Because they might catch on to how conniving you are?
It’s so strange, especially because if anyone in that story is conniving it’s the LW. LW wanted to get Betty fired, right?
(Also, why is LW so obsessed with Archie comics? These are the questions that must be answered.)
Someone in the comments pointed out that since she was a stay at home mom the last 5 years, she probably been involved in her children’s activities with other parents and this kind of behaviour is common and accepted in certain Stepfordian circles; your idea is better, you suggest it to someone who disagrees, so go over their head/behind their back and do it your way anyway, definitely Mommy Wars tactics.
I saw that comment and the outraged responses to it but, sadly, in my own very mild experience with PTO/ room parent activities in a wealthy white suburb, I can endorse this explanation as entirely plausible.
But if this is how you’re going to live (and I do sympathize with women who think this way because most of them have so very little actual power over their own lives), you really need a backup plan other than screaming and attacking people when your plan backfires. You should have a way to bow out gracefully and disingenuously claim a misunderstanding. I hope the OP doesn’t actually learn this lesson and become better at steamrolling people, but I wish she could have at least retained some dignity.
Yeah I don’t know what she was doing there. Maybe she’s just been out of the working adult world for so long that she didn’t even see a problem with any of her behaviour, which is a bit worrying.
It definitely seems like she isn’t used to being a complete subordinate (as in, someones decisions over-rule yours no matter what you think), I know a few moms (mine included) who are a bit like that and struggle to keep their mouths shut if they disagree with someone.
Also the manipulation of the situation in her letter is a bit worrying (I went to Veronica and asked to do it …. Veronica assigned this work to me).
She’s demonstrating impressive rationalization skills, particularly with that “I went to Veronica and asked to do it …. Veronica assigned this work to me.”
I’m flabbergasted by anyone who completely misses the point of the boss-employee relationship (it doesn’t matter if you think you have a better idea than your boss…if you don’t do what they want, you’ve failed and aren’t going to get anything you want, whether it’s a promotion or a special project or a RAISE).
One of the most insightful comments I saw was about how this could be a class issue, if the LW was completely unfamiliar with common workplace dynamics and expectations. And they linked to this fascinating article, Social Class in the Workplace, about the difficulties entering the white-collar world from a blue-collar background. The key example in the article is “Can you remember your parents ever shaking anyone’s hand when you were growing up?”
That is a really fascinating article! I’m in a very similar situation (no one in my family has ever had an office job, and most haven’t gone to college), although office culture doesn’t seem to be as rigid in London; tempers run high and no one has a problem telling someone they’re being a fucking idiot.
Was this commenter saying that LW was working class and that’s why she behaved the way she did? Because I didn’t see that at all
I don’t think they were speculating on the LW, but talking about family members who had similar aggressive attitudes or misunderstandings in white-collar workplaces because they had no experience with them before, and then that link came up.
I’m glad London office culture isn’t so emotionally repressed (ironic, concerning the stereotype we have of you lot). I still dream of living/working there someday…
Ah that makes more sense! I know so many working class men who cannot deal with being told what to do or how to do it, its infuriating because they just keep shooting themselves in the foot and can only get manual labour jobs where that kind of aggression is tolerated.
I’ve found that culturally on a whole Americans are much more prudish and repressed that British people, and a bit more class obbsessed, but in subtler ways, so I can imagine working culture being more formal and restricive. At least in London, unless you’re in law, politics or finance (where hierarchical structure and formality are considered important) no one really gives a fuck so long as you fit with the culture of your organization, there’s still no meritocracy though, the city runs on who you know in your industry.
It was pretty scary, someone actually had an anecdote about how their dad seriously advised them to handle a coworker issue by “grabbing them by the neck, slamming them against a wall, and telling them not to do [that thing] anymore.” Because that had always been what got the job done or earned him respect.
Americans are HORRIBLY prudish/repressed in general, there is no lie.
That really annoyed me. It might be true, but it’s just not a criticism that a dude would get. It annoyed me that commenters had to ascribe a (gendered) reason for her behavior. If the LW is a man, he would be regarded as an unprofessional jerk. But because the LW is assumed to be a woman, she must be a reflection of how women behave.
With regard to the SAHM bit, I found myself wondering if Betty was younger than the letter writer as much as anything–the OP’s total dismissal of Betty’s instructions and her comfort level in going to Veronica definitely made me think that she was kind of categorizing Betty as a child who didn’t need to be taken seriously.
I worry about this all the time! I am a quiet, not especially social person and I have absolutely had jobs where people interpreted me as being conniving or disrespectful. At my last job I got flat out accused of doing things I didn’t do.
I think there are people who don’t trust you if you don’t talk much (because they fear being silently judged?) and other people who trust you more (and will spill all their secrets to you at the slightest provocation). It’s much more about them than it is about you.
people ALWAYS assume I’m judging them, somehow, I guess because I’m quiet?? when really my mental state 90% of the time is “I’m enjoying this conversation but don’t have much to add, will continue to sit and listen happily”
It does get frustrating.
Yeah, I think the key is to give more behavioral signals of engagement? Whether that’s nodding/smiling a lot, little empty interjections of agreement — I guess those reassure people, though I agree it’s exhausting and can feel fake.
I’m lucky that I haven’t had people get angry at me for not being sufficiently engaged, and I try to be aware of my body language and make sure I’m not doing the whole “bobble head” doll impersonation.
But I remember learning how important that body language is in my senior year of college, working at the Writing Center, when our beloved director went on maternity leave and the temporary appointment came in once to talk to us while we were working on some computers facing the wall. We didn’t really care about her (and there was some tension between her appointment by the university and our beloved director), so none of us…really turned around to look around and talk to her, just made some “mmhmm” noises and occasional glances? And we learned later how extremely offended (and maybe hurt) she was, how she actually…complained to the administration about our unprofessionalism and how we ought to be closed down?? Which seems an overreaction because c’mon, we were college kids who haven’t learned anything about workplace norms, but looking back on it I do understand how rude it must have seemed.
(I’m NOT assuming you’re doing anything like that, this is just me rambling about how one learns about workplace social norms and body language expectations.)
Having been on the other side quite a few times, I can tell you WHY it feels like the quiet person must be judgmental. When you talk to someone who doesn’t really respond, it feels like you’re showing them your cards but they choose to not show theirs. Their silence forces you to keep talking, because it would be impolite to ignore them, but you don’t get anything back. It also creates a pressure to be entertaining. So you start to feel like you’re embarrassing yourself, like you’ve failed, like the quiet person doesn’t want to be talking to you (probably because they hate you and everything you say). It feels like you have to do all the work yourself, they won’t help keep the conversation going, why aren’t they helping? Maybe they just don’t want to be friendly and helpful. Or maybe they really are doing that thing where they give you enough rope to hang yourself with! Worst case scenario, it starts to feel like an interrogation, as if they’re a stone-faced investigator waiting for you to betray your secrets…
Of course, many quiet people think it’s horribly rude for the talking person to talk so much. In their mind, being quiet is the most polite option. These people are the ones who give social advice such as “everybody likes to talk about themselves, just ask people a question about themselves and listen quietly!” (I hate this, for the above reasons). But lots of talky people feel that it’s rude and intrusive to ask questions – they’re helplessly throwing out thread after thread for the other person to pick up, and that’s why they (we) talk so much.
It’s a wonder anyone ever has a good time talking to other people, really
So, either they’re enjoying themselves while I get to chill and focus on my beer or if I just nod and go ‘mm’ long enough they’ll crack and tell me where the diamonds are hidden, sounds win-win.
yeah, I do understand some of that, and I do better at holding up my end of a one-on-one conversation (at least hopefully enough that I’m not rude).
Of course, if someone tries to start a conversation with me I hope they’ll say my name/get my attention first, because if you start with a question there’s a 70% chance I won’t hear it and you’ll have to start over, and that is awkward and terrible.
No, it’s usually when, like, my friend and her new roommate and her roommate’s friends are all in the room talking to each other and I’ve just met them, I don’t feel like the burden of conversation at this party should be on me but one of them will feel like I’m being silently judgmental anyways. That’s the one that bothers me.
ESPECIALLY because they always bring it up by like, turning and going “oh I bet Meg hates us, huh? you just want to escape” and that makes the whole group TURN and STARE and my gut reaction is to shut down even further because it reminds me of being bullied where “not showing anyone any reaction” was how I survived in school. I KNOW they’re just trying to include me in the convo but I really don’t do well with teasing from strangers/acquaintances. And then I have to try extra to come out of my shell or whatever and explain myself and so it comes out really awkward and insincere? I don’t knowwww, it’s just bad. And that is why I only go to their parties when I know I’m going to be drinking.
ion. These people are the ones who give social advice such as “everybody likes to talk about themselves, just ask people a question about themselves and listen quietly!”
You mean like, “talk less, smile more”? Surprised no one else went there yet.
I tend to be a bit worst of both worlds on this. I err heavily on the side of not asking questions because that feels rude and intrusive, and I don’t like talking about myself to people I don’t know, especially to people who don’t really respond and who I’ll absolutely assume are just waiting for me to go away.
So I tend to hit it off pretty much exclusively with people who enjoy leading conversations and are comfortable drawing other people out. I also apparently have a trustworthy face, which is probably why people seem to think I’m a good person to confide in. Maybe they just think I won’t gossip about them behind their backs.
Betty was smart. Letting the LW fly her cray flag at the top of the mast, and then having a quiet word with Veronica afterwards (“As you can see, she has to go; lets sever her so she can’t sue us”) was the least getting-stabbed-with-scissors-by-LW-in-the-meeting way to go.
But it was conniving! An honest person would have let herself be stabbed!
Sorry, I’m just really enjoying that word.
Yeah somehow it suggests an evil rat nibbling on cheese while looking nefarious to me. I don’t know why.
ETA: In other words, I love it too, such a good word!
It totally does! I think it’s because the ns look like teeth, the is are the paws, and the v is the cheese.
Yeah, I don’t really understand why being quiet is seen as ”up to something,” even when we take gendered criticism out of it.
Well, LW has kids… I know mothers who assume that when their kids are quiet they must be up to no good. Coincidence? 🙂
I’m a fairly quiet person, and I’ve had an alarming number of people tell me it’s suspicious for someone to be so quiet, or that they don’t trust me, or think I’m silently judging everyone. Funny thing, I usually get some of these comments literally within 5 minutes of meeting the person.
Honestly I myself have a certain amount of the LW’s mindset– not the cray-cray parts – but that is why I’m a consultant. I think what I offer is high quality, and I understand not everybody wants it. So I only take work where we both agree what I will provide. I would NEVER land myself in a staffing hierarchy, and I would suggest that to LW as a strategy…. except she clearly should never be employed in any capacity by anyone because she is not fit for basic workplace interactions.
ETA Betty sounds like an excellent manager – straight through to letting LW sink her own delusional boat in the Monday meeting.
That’s interesting to me, because one of the articles that came up in the comments was Social Class in the Office, about difficulties entering the white-collar world from a blue-collar background (though I’m not making any assumptions about that part applying to you), and some of the advice for those who really struggle with office dynamics is to become a freelancer! Go you, I think you got the best arrangement.
Oh, fascinating. I read this letter last night with as much horror as everyone, then woke up this morning thinking, “O there but for the grace of God….” I would never _behave_ in any way that the LW pulled, but that’s because I am not off my rocker.
The rest though? Personally I would say “well, we are IRISH” but that may just be a different label for the class issue.
Betty may have been busy suppressing the urge to choke a LW out.
man I am neglectful of some household items, in particular the dishes in the sink — but the thing about that is my wife is just as bad; she grew up in a house without a dish-washing machine, where her father relentlessly washed the dishes just all the time.
So, between the two of us, it’s like a Cold War of sink dishes, they pile up higher and higher until one of us cracks. (Usually me; I get much more stressed out by how claustrophobic our kitchen is.)
This is my story about chores.
Living with gf/wife in a household without a dishwasher for two years has turned me into an automaton of sorts. Just set me in front of the sink and I’ll whirr and buzz and do ´em all..
Living alone I just piled them up, but when another person is always there my sense of propriety kicks in and I must-do-the-dishes.
Rooming with my best friend was like that. I would try to wait her out on dishes because I was not going to crack. But she knew I would crack and wanted to see how long that would take, and she was not at all bothered by the mess. She was avoiding the dishes because she thought it was my job, she avoided them because she didn’t care and my ever-increasing stress over their continued presence was fun for her. She was positively gleeful when I got to the breaking point.
I miss her a lot.
This was always my tactic with my mother (I was a cruel teenager), she’d get insanely worked up and scream at me about doing the dishes or how messy the kitchen was (tbh, usually her mess.) and I knew if I just waited it out and turned up the music she’d clean anyway.
I tried to explain it to her once (‘Your standards of clean and my standards are not the same thing mother, get used to it.’) but she was having none of it. Now she lives alone and has no one to blame about her messy kitchen but still calls me to complain about having to clean pans from cooking chicken for the dog.
Ha! I think that was the right tactic.
I knew if I just waited it out and turned up the music she’d clean anyway.
I am trying to work out if my parents were that much stricter than your mum or if I was just more easily cowed by authority, because the thought of deliberately ignoring being told to clean up makes me shiver. (They got very angry if our own rooms were messy; if I had actively refused to clean up a shared area, the level of rage would have been terrifying.)
Probably a bit of both, I was a teenage asshole of epic proportions and there was no figure of authority worthy of my respect, in particular my mother, who was trying her best but I figured her out when I was about 4. She’s all bark, no follow through and I was always willing to go bigger in order to win a fight (oh you thought I wouldn’t kick off because we’re in public? Think again mother dear.)
It’s a long story of how I got that way, but it resulted in some spectacular fights and I knew exactly how to get everything I wanted and had no qualms about how I did it (largely revolving around my mother’s terrible memory and my excellent one. She’d make up some rule or try to grounds me, but would forget by the next day so I rarely paid attention). I’m slightly less of an asshole to her these days because she now respects me as an autonomous person instead of desperately trying, and failing, to control my behaviour lest I make the same stupid mistakes she did (which was never really a possibility, but it has taken 24 years for her to realise I’m not her and nothing like her. Our relationship is vastly improved because of it)
*WASN’T. She *wasn’t* avoiding the dishes because she thought it was my job. Can’t believe I didn’t catch that typo. She didn’t think that. She just liked to see me crack.
Omg dude I have to tell you about how we do dishes in my relationship. My wife actually invented it and it is called Dish Day.
1. Today it is your dish day. You are in charge of all dishes, putting away any leftovers, wiping down the counters.
2. Tomorrow it is the other person’s dish day. They are in charge of all those things.
3. Then it is your turn again
4-infinity. Repeat.
It’s great because it all evens out in the end. Sometimes you have to clean up after a dinner party but some dish days are just two plates and a mug.
I love this system and I will never stop evangelizing about it.
this system SEEMS like it would work but what if we both just try to wait the other out and secretly seethe about them until our marriage breaks apart?
You know, I think my marriage would have failed long ago if my wife hadn’t invented Dish Day System. So much seething! So much outright arguing!
We do a “one person cooks, the other one cleans” rotation. It has gotten a bit wonky over the past few years, but once our daughter/dishwasher goes off to college in the fall, it’ll go back to that. Works great!
The problem with that one is that it can lead to the old: “Why the hell did you use four different frying pans? And two spatulas? Seriously, this could have been done with half that many utensils. Why should I have to wash twice as much stuff just because you’re bad at managing your workflow?” complaint.
(My parents. I’m single, so I only have to wash the stuff *I* dirty, and I’m lucky that my housemate rarely lets his stuff get to silly levels.)
I think if that is the argument that is happening, the argument is really about something else, and the dishes are just the medium that transmits the resentment. 🙂
I’m inclined to agree – this is the system that Beardo and I use to handle kitchen mess (I make it, he cleans it up). I occasionally get a little good-natured ribbing from him about using literally every spoon in the drawer, but he still does the cleaning promptly after supper with minimal complaints. I think it helps that, though I do the vast majority of the cooking, he takes a turn often enough that he also knows how much effort goes into the meal planning, shopping, prep, and cooking – so the labor is really pretty well distributed.
I get that one a lot, plus a mournful ‘why can’t you learn to clean a little as you go?!’
I’m all, ‘dude, I DID. You would not want to see how this kitchen would look if I hadn’t.’
I actually like “kitchen night” where one person does everything cooking/cleaning for the night. That way a) you get the other nights off b) you only have to clean up your own messes, which seems more fair.
We tried that but had two problems:
1. We do not share cooking duties 50/50
2. There was a lot of resentment and seething and occasional outright fighting about “you wouldn’t use so many dishes/spatulas/pans to cook with if you had to clean them all!!!11!!!!”
My boyfriend and I each cook for ourselves! And we both hate doing dishes. It’s a problem. But we rarely argue about it, which is nice. We just thank each other for doing a load of dishes.
We do that, and we try to cook roughly equal amounts of time. It works well, although I tend to wash things up as I go/make sure I’ve cleared the draining board off and put clean things away so my partner can have a clear space to get on with stuff, whereas he does that less often.
We generally follow that, but it breaks down when it’s a meal we’re BOTH making (we just started getting Blue Apron in an effort to stop ordering so much takeout, and new recipes are exciting!)
Yes, we have a similar system. Every night, one person is responsible for the kitchen (dishes, leftovers, making coffee), and the other is responsible for the cats (food, litterbox, etc). The next night we switch. Has worked for at least 4 years now!
(Occasionally we will break the pattern a little if one person has been out of town, thereby avoiding all chores, or has a ton of work to do.)
We do this, only with a baby. “Do you want to do the dishes, or get this ball of fury ready for bed?” Dishes have never seemed so attractive…
Same, same. Does it make me a bad mother that sometimes I just really would rather wash the dishes than wash the screaming preschooler?
Sounds perfectly reasonable.
I mean look obviously the fact that I see this as an easily abusable system is proof that I will/should die alone but obviously you just ‘decide’ to cook elaborate meals on their dish days and reheat the left overs on paper plates on your days. As long as when you cook you cook enough food that they can’t reasonably retaliate with out first emptying the fridge you’re safe.
Of course I say this. I spent 3 years living with my brother who had A) become terrified of the sink and B) didn’t think soap was needed if he did do them. I have if I think about it done more than my share of dishes in most of my non-living-with-my-mom life.
Some of my coworkers have the just-rinse-and-put-away method of doing dishes. I do not use the communal flatware.
Whaaaaaaa??
I mean, I can see reusing YOUR OWN cup that you just drink water out of, but… SILVER WARE.
*imagines a used fork sitting in the drawer with all of the clean forks*
*huurrrk*
THANK YOU. The first time I saw one of them do this, I was so shocked I didn’t know what to say. Now I just know to turn down all dinner party invitations from coworkers.
In their defense, *some* of them I’ve only seen do this with flatware they had not eaten off of, only cut/stirred food with. But (1) I’m allergic to a lot of things, and now that spoon is probably a death spoon to me, and (b) it’s not unusual to find utensils with dried food on them, and THAT’S WHY. But I guess they don’t care? Running that spoon under a light stream of water for half a second wont’ get that dried oatmeal off.
My office is very uncanny valley-like in that it is full of people who seem just like me but . . . aren’t.
Well truly any system is game-able but it helps to remember that our home is not a competition where I am Jim Belushi in any sitcom and my wife is the awesome partner who can’t help it she just genuinely LOVEZ to clean 🙂
We do make allowances for things like sickness and being-away. Sometimes we swap dish days and sometimes we barter with them (“if you sort the laundry I will take your dish day tomorrow!”)
Yeah, while I could definitely take advantage of our system by cooking things requiring lots of wahing up and trying to plan things so my partner only made one-pot things, I try to just be as considerate as I can towards him and assume he is doing the same for me. If we both try our best to do as much as possible and make things easier for the other, it should work out in both our favours. It’s basically the Prisoner’s Dilemma, but romantic.
The Prisoner’s Dilemma, but romantic is an excellent summary basically designed to urge me to be better at housework.
We ended up doing basically this the last time I lived with roommates, and it worked really well.
Yeah, growing up I was responsible for clearing the table and emptying the dishwasher, but not the steps in between, mostly, so I often sort of just leave dishes by the sink for way too long. I’m pretty good about putting tableware into the dishwasher, but pots/pans any anything that is not supposed to go in the dishwasher gets neglected as long as possible.
Dishes, man, they can be the end of relationships. Happily for me, I was banging the best dishwasher at my restaurant. When we moved in together, it turned out that his standards of kitchen cleanliness are higher than mine, AND he hates waking up to a dirty kitchen (whereas I prefer to blearily drink my coffee and scrub the pots n pans). Problem. Solved.
my wife still invites her family to come to the house sometimes (to “see the baby”) partly just because her father just hell of loves doing dishes I guess, because every time they leave all the dishes are cleaned.
That’s my mom – it was great until she got cataracts and then could not discern between “clean” and “dirty” dishes.
This is my dad except with cars. If I leave my car at their house, when I come back it’s been totally dusted/vacuumed on the inside. Once my sun visor stopped working properly, and when I picked up my car after going out of town, he’d put velcro on it. He is big on velcro.
oh man that is a really good one, where does your dad live?
If you are ever in the Dallas/Fort Worth area of Texas, feel free to stop by their house for all your car detailing needs.
That’s a very Dad Magazine kind of thing to do… I love it.
Someone on twitter referred to a text my dad sent me as “peak dad,” and I have to agree. My dad is very much dad magazine material.
My husband and I are a little like this, with the added difficulty that we keep kosher so we have two sets of dishes and can’t pile milk and meat didhes together, so if we have chicken stir-fry and the wok is in the sink, the breakfast cereal dishes pile up alarmingly quickly.
Added to this difficulty, I can do 10 or 20 minutes of dishes and stop, while husband has to do ALL THE DISHES, until he’s in physical pain but the dishes are done. Also, I prefer doing dishes, but he is much more thorough.
…basically, we’re counting down the days until we move into a new house with a dishwasher.
we actually HAVE a dishwasher, but a major problem is that in addition to not liking to do the dishes, neither of us likes to take the clean dishes out
(I do think that maybe the idea scenario would be *two* dishwashers and now dish cabinets at all, and then that way we would have to unload the dishwasher, you just take a plate that you need out of dishwasher one, put it into dishwasher two when you’re done, &c.)
(OTOH, my parents have this system with like two mini-dishwashers and they still have dishes in their sink, so)
NOPE. Counterexample:
All dishes get dirty, all get put in dishwasher 1, dishwasher 1 gets run, all dishes clean.
All bowls get used, get put in dishwasher 2.
No one needs plates. More bowls required.
dishwasher 2 gets run. bowls are clean, yay!
bowls get used. no where to put dirty bowls.
Whaaaaat, unloading is the best part of the dish process. Although not as good as when I was a child, and we had a rainbow of plastic plates, and unloading meant I could put them in gradient order. Shockingly, nobody else in my family did that.
I would totally do that.
We had a rainbow of plastic cups, and I was the only person in my family who put them away properly. They mocked me for it.
This is the problem in my house, too — we have a sink full of dirty dishes and a Clean Dish Storage Device under the counter, and instead of unloading the clean dishes into the cabinets so we can wash the dirty ones, we just use dishes out of the Clean Dish Storage Device until it runs out of silverware.
Took me a minute to realize what the heck a Clean Dish Storage Device was and then realized that, yup, we have one of those too.
Ok this just made me think of a brilliant (if maybe crazily inefficient and impractical) idea: Cabinets that seal and wash your dishes. You just put them away, then they clean them for you.
I do all the dishes, because my fiance hates doing it with a fiery passion, but it evens out, cause I don’t have to laundry evaaaar. But there is a slight issue in that we both have some issues with spoons/energy levels, so we also try to be forgiving when things pile up. In other words, there is a big pile of dishes in the sink and I don’t waaaaaaaanna. But I’ll get to it eventually. Sigh.
Really, we just need a butler or something, we are Bad at Grownuping.
This sounds like a good system, though! Things around the house get done eventually; neither of you are bitter or resentful because you feel like the distribution of work is unfair. You’re both understanding of the other’s needs and energy levels and understand that housework, like all things, sometimes falls subject to the cruel whims of life. That’s…that’s pretty much the definition of being good at grownuping, actually?! I mean, yeah, get a butler, that would be amazing, butlers for all, but you don’t need one because you’re bad. You’re fine! You’re an adult and you’re fine!
Awwww, thank you. That made me feel much better today!
(I have to use this to remind myself to do dishes even when it’s not my turn)
aw this is a good point
What a great illustration! Neither of them present as female, either! Ha!
He has a whole series of those that are pretty great. Also “tragedy reprieves” that are cute.
With all love to everyone, but don’t you guys worry about bugs and stuff when you leave the dishes too long? Or funky smells, or stuff getting dried on and making it impossible to clean when you get to it?
For the most part, they don’t stay there long enough to get bugs, and SO FAR nothing has ever gotten so dried on that a thorough clean can’t take care of it, but we can’t keep living like this. 🙁
My husband grew up in a very unkempt and borderline hoarder house, so having things tidy is super important to him, and I’ve always been “wash everything before you go to bed”, so I’m not sure if it will be at all helpful, but here is what we do!
We make dinner together most nights, with one person being in charge of the meal and the other being sous/dishwasher. We chat and share a beer and listen to music and have fun with it. Most dishes are done during prep, and whoever ended up doing less work washes the last of the dishes and the ones we ate off while the other person gets ready for bed. We’ve been living together for five years and have never fought about dishes. There is another way!
I have never lived in an apartment where the kitchen had the room/layout for this. Where I live now, the dishwasher opens up in front of the stove!
I’ve never lived anywhere with a dishwasher 🙁 I mean, except for like our hands haha
This is basically our routine! Agree 100x for one person doing dishes as the other person is cooking (you’re in the kitchen anyway), agree 1000x for talking/having a drink/listening to music/decompressing from the day during prep (to fit more relationship into your relationship). Another way, indeed.
I mean, this absolutely happens. Even in the best living situations I’ve been in, where the kitchen was always cleaned very promptly, every so often a mug would get temporarily lost with a very small amount of something in it, and two weeks later when it was eventually found, it would have mold.
Fortunately never bugs, though.
My partner has the terrible habit where he pours recently boiled water over all the dishes to rinse them, and then leaves them in the sink for days instead of actually cleaning them and putting them in the drying rack. This does solve the bug/smell/stuck food problem, but….
Eh, I mean sorta? but the size of food that bugs actually need to thrive is wildly tinier than whats left on plates. I mean the crumbs that fall between the counter and the stove alone could feed an ant colony. I’ve come to suspect bugs are more a symptom of how well sealed your house is than how clean it is.
Uggggh. I have no problem with dirty dishes, hell I’m probably the worst offender, so long as they are neatly piled beside the sink and not IN the sink. I need to be able to use the sink!!
I grew up in a house where there was usually a sink full of cold water with jars soaking in it where my mother got bored at the end of doing the dishes. Ick.
This. I keep a very clean kitchen but I have ants anyway just because we have baseboard cracks in the apartment and the doors don’t seal well.
The best thing I ever did re: dishes was to buy two large bus tubs on Amazon. One goes next to the sink, the other one goes on the table. The hard and fast rule is that when both tubs are full, the dishes in the one by the sink must be washed. When sink-tub is empty, we switch them out and start over. This mostly has worked out for us.
I think having a tub and a half full of fishes lying around would make me even crazier than having them in the sink! Like, my instinct would be to hide away the tubs, so I would end up sticking them in a cabinet still full of dirty dishes just to get it out of sight. But I love all these different stories about how different couples make it work.
I think that the key is to figure out what the essential problem is and to solve it. For you, it might be visible dishes. Personally, I cannot stand it when the sink is full and I cannot use it to rinse things or fill pots, and i haaaaaaate it when there are dishes everywhere on every surface, especially the cutting board and next to the stove. It made sense for us, as two people who mostly cook at home and bring our own lunches, have no dishwasher, and can maybe do 1-2 small dish loads a day, to find a place where dirty dishes could hang out that wasn’t “everywhere.”
Others will have different solutions. I think that the key is figuring out what your individual housekeeping bugbears happen to be so that you can problem-solve together!
Easily my least favorite chore. I am not proud of this, but I put off doing dishes to the point that sometimes it’s better to throw something away. Like the semi-disposable tupperware from the grocery store that technically you’re supposed wash and use again? If it sits long enough that I’m afraid to open it, it’s gone.
My signature contribution to any adult household I’ve been part of has been a consistent supply of the good chinet paper plates and solo cups.
But my favorite is vacuuming! Hand me a vacuum and I will go. to. town., and then I’ll just sit on the couch and marvel at all of the beautiful lines in the carpet.
you know what’s funny? I don’t like vacuuming at all but I kind of really like sweeping. I find it a very restful and soothing activity.
I loathe vacuuming (the noise! the cord!) but sweeping and mopping is A+
oh no not mopping for me I don’t like activities that are too wet
*ba-dum tss*
hmm
cordless vacuums for the win
They’re still noisy and heavy and don’t get the corners without having to wrestle with a hose. Harrumph.
I straight-up started wearing earplugs to vacuum because I hate the noise so much but when I lived by myself there was no one else to do it.
When I purchased my first home, one of the major selling points was that it had all tile floors. Nice and cool in the blast furnace summer and I could sweep them instead of having to UGH vacuum. Not only do I hate the noise, I have very long hair and shed like a Persian cat. Every vacuum I’ve ever owned has quickly expired, choking on a mouthful of hair that could stuff a couch.
I despise vacuuming and mopping (but only one room has carpet in the house and it’s not mine, so I don’t have to worry about it). Dishes and sweeping are probably the two I mind the least, as long as I’m not stuck doing a bunch of other people’s dishes all the time, unless they’re doing mine with some frequency as well.
I do 95% of the groceries and cooking, and 80% of the dish maintenance for a house of four, and my system is to load/wash dirty items during cooking time as soon as they’re done being used. Usually by the time dinner is ready, only the cooking pot(s) (and then the actual dinner dishes) are left. Often to get the dishwasher unloaded I play a game called, “Can I get the dishwasher unloaded/reloaded before the tea water is ready?”
That’s my favorite chore-related game! I also do 95% of kitchen-related chores for me and my wife, and ever since we moved to an apartment with a dishwasher, I find dish routines so much more bearable (and often fun and satisfying!). Being able to put the dirty dishes out of sight makes me much more willing to tackle them, even if I still have to scrape and rinse to get them 50% clean first. It’s psychological I guess. Also putting my entire music library on shuffle, radio shows and all, gives me lots of fun listening surprises, which helps keep me from getting bored while cooking & cleaning. I really enjoy having the kitchen be My Domain (except cleaning the stovetop, which I can avoid indefinitely, so my wife is in charge of that).
I do this minus the game. Cause I work from home and drink tea throughout the day, I always do a few dishes at a time while waiting for it to boil. Keeps the sink from ever filling up too badly.
Every place I have ever lived until I moved to Queens 4 years ago have had dishwashers. At my first off-campus house in college, I lived with 3 other girls, and somehow none of them had really ever used their parents’ dishwashers, except for maaaaaaybe at Thanksgiving, and for the first two months we really battled about how often to run the dishwasher. Then we started having family meals and inviting friends over more often, and boy howdy did that no-dishwasher rule fly out the window.
Not having a dishwasher anymore is the PITS… w/r/t the girl I lived with for 3ish years when I first moved to Queens, I suspect we would be a lot closer now (and WAY better roommates then) if I had been better about the dishes, but it is The Worst Chore, especially when you know that the kale gunk that’s clogging up the drain is 100% not yours but the majority of the dishes are.
Now I live by myself and do the dishes when I feel like it, which ends up actually being more often than I figured it would be because I know EXACTLY how much kale gunk is in the sink (none) before plunging elbow-deep into it.
I consider it a failure of my life that I’m over thirty and STILL do not have access to a dishwasher. It is legit a fantasy of mine to have one. Also to be able to do laundry whenever without going to the laundromat.
Laundry is overrated! I like the smell of doing laundry, but when I moved to NYC one of my dearest friends (who had lived in NYC for 10+ years) told me not to bother doing my own laundry – other people will wash and fold your laundry for you for only slightly more dollars than doing it yourself. Dropping off my laundry before work and picking it up after work is one of my favorite chores – carrying 20lbs of clothes several blocks is totally an arm workout too – and I’m never doing my own laundry again until/unless I flee to the suburbs one day.
PS: totally not a failure, btw. Although if I thought my landlord wouldn’t freak out over the water bill, I would 100% have already bought one of those countertop dishwashers.
I had one, and I miss it sooooo much. (There is no room for one in my teeny tiny miniature kitchen.)
Oh, guys, the key for me is distraction! I don’t mind doing anything at all to the accompaniment of Netflix on the iPad, podcasts on the phone, music… This is how I do everything except vacuuming (and only then because it’s, you know, loud). It’s basically my way of bribing myself into doing anything now. I cannot recommend it enough. You can wash a million dishes by hand (I’ve never had a dishwasher, growing up or now) if you’re watching a favorite sitcom while you do it!
This is how I have watched 30 Rock!
Yup, definitely this. I am also fond of old time radio for this purpose. I can listen to Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar and clean at the same time.
I flip on my Bluetooth speakers! Sudsy dance party in the kitchen!
(it helps if you are slightly intoxicated too, if that’s your jam… there was a Buzzfeed article like a year ago with the subject line “Songs to Hotbox Your Shower To,” and the accompanying Spotify playlist has been a favorite of mine ever since)
My dad goes into an audiobook zone and does chores. Always does all the dishes.
My housemates and I last year had enough bench-space that we just put down masking tape; everything you used went in your masked-off square and if we needed it for joint meals we could a) yell at you to wash it up or b) wash it, but move something from our square to yours, so the same net amount of washing up was done by all.
That system worked much better than the holiday I had last year, where one person loved cooking/baking and made a huge mess and the other two were more than happy to clean (and to eat the delicious Baked Goods!) but never That Night. So the Baker would clean it all anyway. This led to a day of sharp relief at the end of the holiday when she went home and we both looked at each other that night and said “Yay, we don’t have to think about these dishes until tomorrow!”
Incompatible Washing Routines can be a real strain.
I read this article yesterday, and found it really on-point about some of the issues around mental illness treatment in the U.S:
Who gets to be the “Good Schizophrenic”?
A family member has been suffering from psychosis over the last couple years, and one thing that surprised me throughout the process is how *scarce* discussion about psychosis is in health conversations; it makes the whole thing super lonely.
It’s completely terrifying, all my thoughts with you and your family.
A very good friend of mine occasionally experiences psychotic episodes. He’s never been diagnosed with anything beyond depression because he hates doctors – understandably as they’ve never been much help to him. He is what you’d call high-functioning – he’s always had jobs, went to a top university etc. and just considers it part of himself – that it’s inevitable he’ll always go through periods in his life when he has auditory hallucinations/full-blown psychotic episodes. I think that stigma about being diagnosed as having some kind of psychotic disorder – whether it’s schizophrenia or anything else – is partly what’s stopped him trying to get treatment. He’s well aware that what he experiences is psychosis, that’s his word not mine, but as long as he can pretend everything’s fine and act like it’s not happening (which obviously he can’t always) then he can… not ignore it, but you see what I’m getting at. Because no one talks about it, he doesn’t talk about it.
A friend of his is schizophrenic and again, high-functioning, but I think he partly doesn’t want to think about treatment because however bad it gets with him, something in him says ‘Well at least I’m not schizophrenic like X.’ This despite the fact her day-to-day mental health is better than his because she has been getting treatment for the past few years.
I really appreciate the good thoughts – same to you and your friend!
It is definitely something I’ve noticed – talking about depression instead of psychosis. My family uses “depression” as a euphemism for paranoid delusions basically, because it carries less stigma, and when the individual does get treatment that’s the usual diagnosis.
When my sister says “x is really depressed again” I 100% know that this means “x thinks the government has hacked into her tv and is recording her through it, and has stopped eating and sleeping regularly.”
This really frustrated me at first, because it seemed like we were avoiding what was actually wrong. But you know what? If talking about the depression caused by her paranoid delusions makes it easier for her to seek help and results in others being more understanding and supportive of the bad periods? I get it. It makes it a lot easier for her to go back to work during the good periods, which is important to her.
I wish we could start to address those types of mental illness more directly, but from what I’ve seen we know so little and have such shitty systems of care that in the interim this seems to be the best approach.
Yes! I saw this on yesterday’s LR and forgot to click. Thank you for re-linking.
I didn’t even see it in the LR yesterday! Of course The Toast already linked it. I read this thread almost every day, but covertly at work so I sometimes miss things…
I’m sure this has been linked on the Toast before, but if your website’s full of assholes, it’s your fault!
Thank you for your work, Toast moderators, you are appreciated
Yep. This is the problem I had at xojane until I eventually abandoned it, except for creepy corner.
Urgh, xojane. I stopped reading it when I realised I was hate-reading it. The commenters were so classist and ableist, and just generally toxic.
I actually linked to that same article in one of the xojane discussions about comments, once. Not that it helped.
“I think we both believe in the traditional roles of the woman doing most of cleaning and cooking”
From one of his responses to a comment. Do you though? It really doesn’t sound like that’s what she believes. It sounds like that’s what he wants her to believe.
On the plus side, dude is 22 and has probably never cohabited before. Hopefully he’s still got plenty of time to learn how to adult before some poor woman gets stuck with him for life.
ETA: Many commenters pointing out that if they believe in “traditional” gender roles, she’s still fulfilling both of those roles by earning the money and taking care of the house.
Isn’t it nice when you pick and choose like that which of traditional roles you want to inhabit? Because he sure as hell doesn’t believe he should provide the money, either.
Add 5-10 years to this guy’s age and throw a few kids in the mix, and you’ve got my mom’s second husband. Ugh.
just like the deadweights they had in ye olden tymes
It doesn’t sound like he believes it himself because surely he’d be the one working 40+ hours and making the most money if being ~traditional~ was so important to him??
in this particular traditional household she’s the breadwinner and the housekeeper and he’s the baby
Clearly ‘traditional values’ = My partner should replace my mommy
Guy who has shadowed me in the department and would drunk-text me after TA’ing the wine classes, and now is in the same PhD as me. Mid 30’s, getting a degree in the same thing his dad is a well-known academic for. Because he has no other ideas. Yesterday announced to us (the women), “I just want someone to take care of me and be a stay at home dog daddy”.
We both closed our cubicle doors on him.
I have a boy who fancies me who’s idea of flirting it telling me he’s a gold digger and that I can be in charge and take care of him. No thanks.
A+ gif. I have never seen that one before and my life has been immensely enriched now 😀
That is absolutely perfect.
“Yes, we fulfill traditional family roles in this household. My roles are ‘husband’ and ‘wife,’ and yours, by declining to work full-time or participate in the housework, is ‘child.’ Our sex life will adjust accordingly.”
Aha yes, “I think” meaning that she huffily does it all and resents him for it. Traditional!
i have read this and am no breathing very loudly through my nostrils as if i could somehow bring forth flames…
Yes, and the Redditor is the child in the relationship.
I was not aware of the Hillary/Di Blasio “joke” until now, but uuuuugh. Couldn’t they find anything else to joke about? And if they couldn’t, they could have just made another routine pantsuit joke and been done with the “bits.”
#judgment?
Politicians should really stay away from comedy in all forms, but in particular staged ‘bits’. Its never good, even without the casual racism,
I didn’t know what ‘CP Time’ was until the end of the article, but seriously how can someone be so un-aware of themselves and the current media landscape to think that’s an ok joke to make? Even just the use of the term Coloured People should have made them balk right? (I have heard of Africa Time, but that was an African guy joking about birthday parties when he was a kid, and its still not a term I would use. Yet again one of those ‘They are allowed to joke about it because it’s their culture, you are not.’ things)
Also, Bill was just in trouble for yelling at Black Lives Matter protestors last week. You’d think Hillary would proceed with caution after that. But she takes the opposite approach–full steam ahead, toot tooooooot!
That was my thought. Like, Hillary: Stop relying on white guys named Bill to win you points with people of color. No matter how great their popularity is among black voters. It’s not working.
I am really sad about this because I’ve been supporting her through everything until now, but racism, like homophobia and transphobia, is a hard “no” for me. Now I’m really unsure politically of where I stand.
Does it make a difference at all if it was clearly a script that she, deBlasio, and Leslie Odom Jr. were all participating in, and she clearly was not the one who wrote that script (or the one who used the phrase)?
It was a serious error in judgment, I cannot believe it made it past ANY levels of scrutiny, but I’m puzzled by how you see this as revealing racism on her part.
I am not a Berner, ok? I am a die-hard Hillary supporter and have been since the pre-2008 primary season! I don’t think that this “reveals racism” in a way that it wasn’t here before, but I am questioning my candidate due to some bad decisions she made. Which is my perogative and my right as a human. This latest incident follows Bill C’s disastrous response to BLM activists while campaigning for her, as well as that weird awkward thing where this young black woman kind of got in her face and Hillary was snappish and not really responsive. I am questioning her commitment to anti-racism, and I need her to work on fixing that. This is totally reasonable of me and it would be ignorant of me to put my blinders and act like none of it matters because I really REALLY want her to be president.
And obviously the only safe place to talk about any of this stuff is here, on The Toast.
I’m really sorry my comment sounded like it was attacking you! My question was 100% sincere (particularly the “does it make a difference” part), I wanted to discuss this in a Toastlike fashion, it never occurred to me that you were for Bernie (and honest to God, it wouldn’t have mattered to me if you were).
I am also not here to defend Hillary for anything in particular — I get that it sounded like I did, but I spend a lot of time thinking about politics and the behind-the-scenes stuff. I am dying to know WHO THE FUCK wrote that whole exchange, if the three of them rehearsed this, how Leslie is feeling now about it.
I am seriously boggled that it’s a thing that was written down (probably in a teleprompter) and that they all committed to it and at least one other person signed off on it somehow.
Anyway, I agree with you that everything else you mentioned absolutely must be considered in evaluating Hillary as a candidate. Your initial comment sounded to me like this incident is what made you unsure, but clearly I was wrong in reading it that way.
I do apologize that my wording did sound like that. I will also say that my family’s default thing to do when I disagree with them is to tell me I’m stupid and just don’t understand how things work, so I am sensitive to seemingly being told I’m stupid and don’t understand how scripts/writing work, when I also believe that any politician worth their salt will, you know, read the jokes first and make sure that they’re racist or anything?
It’s also frustrating that it’s impossible to have a conversation about this since Hillary supporters are super defensive (with good reason!) and therefore don’t necessarily want to hear criticism of their candidate and Bernie supporters are like “yeah, yeah, she’s the worst, vote for Bernie” which, no. And Bernie supporters are not interested in hearing some totally valid criticisms of their candidate (at least the ones I know), so yeah, serious and nuance political discussions just are not a thing that is happening for me right now.
And really, if there is anything that all that damned history school taught me it was that there’s no such thing as a perfect political figure, and also that we need to be open and honest about our heroes and not just handwave problematic things that they do, say and believe. See: Thomas Jefferson, Sally Hemings, Notes on a State of Virginia, The Declaration of Independence.
I can’t blame you at all for your response, considering how 99% of political conversations on the internet go. :/ And I’m really sorry your family treats you that way, that’s some top-grade bullshit.
“And really, if there is anything that all that damned history school taught me it was that there’s no such thing as a perfect political figure, and also that we need to be open and honest about our heroes and not just handwave problematic things that they do, say and believe.”
Oh man, I have never agreed with anyone harder than I do with you right here.
I had never heard the phrase “CP time” before, so I was unsure how well known it is in NYC or if there were other interpretations that had taken over the original definition. Also, I’m a white woman who has never experienced a racist slight, so I know my opinion/response to the joke doesn’t matter, what matters is how POC received it (and it clearly wasn’t a positive response).
Thank you for your balanced and supportive response! The thoughtful nature of commenters like you is what makes this a safe place to have political opinions.
All the credit goes to Nicole, Mallory, and Nikki for creating The Toast and fostering such a wonderful, supportive place. I can be bitchier other places, but I view my favorite websites like delightful parties, and even when I strongly disagree with other guests (not the case here), I still want to be civil and courteous and not make an ugly scene, out of respect for the hosts. And I do feel genuine good will for the other Toasties!
Remember: there are more than two parties, and you may see more than two sets of names on the ballot in November. And Hillary is not the only woman making a presidential bid. Rejecting the R/D binary is NOT a wasted vote.
But if only two sets of names show up on the presidential part of your ballot, you can abstain and focus more on your state and local elections, which are just as important if not more so.
Rejecting the R/D binary is NOT a wasted vote.
Everything I have studied and witnessed in politics contradicts that. I’m still open to considering more evidence, if you have any to share! But especially considering what happened in 2000, with the Nader effect — yeah, I’me extremely skeptical.
However, I could not agree more with you about how state and local elections have a far bigger impact on most of our individual lives.
I know that some 3rd party candidates are primarily working to reach the threshold (5%) where their party can accept federal funding. Nader didn’t make it nationally for the Green Party in 2000, but did in a few states. So in the longer term supporting them makes a great deal of difference for their future visibility. I personally am still sour about that election but I do recognize that the persistence of the two-party system is problematic in itself.
I really, really, really, REALLY hate that “a vote for a third party is a wasted vote” rhetoric. I have heard it for years, and IMLTHO, it’s a scare tactic used to get people to “fall in line”.
Two states now have had governors who were neither R nor D (Maine and Minnesota). Maine has elected Greens to state legislature. Both Maine and Vermont have elected Independents to the Senate (one of whom is now running for a binary party’s nomination for president). If that can happen at state levels, it can happen at a national one. (And it did. Back in 1860, the Republican Party was a “third party”, and their candidate won the presidency.)
ALL parties should be invited to participate in the debates. ALL parties’ candidates should automatically be on the presidential ballot. ALL candidates should be given airtime by mainstream media. If more people were aware they had more than two choices, that would be a good thing.
The only time I felt I wasted my vote was in 2012, voting for president. I did not vote my conscience. I bought into that “wasted vote” rhetoric. Never again.
I can agree that the RNC and DNC are powerful organizations invested in blocking third-party candidates, which does a disservice to the country. It’s alarming to me that I wasn’t more aware of Green-party governors.
I agree with you entirely on this, too: “ALL parties should be invited to participate in the debates. ALL parties’ candidates should automatically be on the presidential ballot. ALL candidates should be given airtime by mainstream media. If more people were aware they had more than two choices, that would be a good thing.”
Genuine question: I live in Texas and often feel like my vote for a democrat is a wasted vote (except in more local elections). Just curious if you have any argument against that?
Is there any stronger argument for me to bother voting for a democrat than there is against others voting for third party?
ETA: I really am asking genuinely. I’m really skeptical about the power of voting (except, as I said earlier, in more local elections) and most of my friends respond with shock if I say I’m not sure I’ll bother.
I think whether or not to vote is a highly personal thing, and I would never exhort you to vote. I vote because I know that generations of women fought very hard so that I could vote myself instead of just hoping my husband votes for the candidate I like. I vote because disenfranchisement and voter intimidation are strong enough tactics in areas that I have lived that casting my vote as a working-class liberal feels significant to me. But it is up to you whether or not you want to vote.
Hear hear!
Hi, I lived in Texas for 23 years, until just last year! So I understand your pain.
First off, I think everyone should vote according to their conscience, even if that’s third party. I would discourage anyone from haranguing someone to change their vote because the haranguer thinks they know better — that goes against the principles of American democracy (as flawed as they are in action). I will admit it physically pains me when I hear someone say they won’t vote at all, but even then, I’m not going to harangue you, because what good does that do?
The only contest in which I would agree your vote has the least power (not wasted, but the least power) is in the presidential race, due to the feckless cruelty of the electoral college — but that’s only considering the current Texas demographic, which is forecast to change in the very near future, with the growing Hispanic population. So even there, it’s a temporary situation.
And the presidential race is only one among the many, many contests on the ballot not just this year, but in the midterm and municipal elections. And those, as you said, are far easier to affect by voting, especially because turnout is so low.
As for voting between Democrat and third party — it depends on the individual race. As Shelly pointed out, the Green Party has made substantial success in other states! So I would do serious research, look at polling, to see how much of a chance your candidate is. What I would really pay attention to is how close the race is between the Republican and the Democrat — because if it’s very close (and the third-party candidate far behind), then your vote will count the most in deciding whether the Republican or the Democrat takes office.
This is how I see it: the only way your vote is sure to be wasted, to have no power at all, is if it isn’t cast. If you truly cannot vote for any candidate in good conscience — if you truly think either choice will bring about the same result for your country and your fellow citizens’ lives — then sure, stay home. That’s your right too, to opt out of democracy. And I say that without judgment.
I was so pissed when I read about this last night. Note to Bill deB: just because you’re married to an African-American woman and are the male head of a black household, you’re not black. This is a not a joke you’re entitled to. Note to Hillary: your husband’s (tongue-in-cheek) moniker as our “first black president’ doesn’t give you creds as married to a black guy; YOU’RE not entitled to use this joke either.
White Politicians: racial jokes = don’t go there. Ever. The end.
I loved that White House piece, but the last paragraph about Bill as First Gentleman!!!:
“He’ll make it work. . . . He just connects with people so instinctively and so instantly,” Muscatine said. “I’m sure she’ll have an East Wing staff that takes care of a lot of the social side. He’s not going to sit there and pick the flowers for a dinner, obviously.”
WHY NOT THO
Maybe he’s allergic.
OR GENDER ROLES.
yeah, I like the implicit statement by Hillary’s campaign that the position of First Lady (at least the domestic side) is kind of bullshit and someone with that kind of skills should be paid to use them.
Too many scheduled sax interludes when he plans the dinners.
I really want this to be the case.
no such thing, my friend. no such thing.
Came here to say the same thing. If he wants to get the public role of First Spouse, then he should be willing to take on the traditional “supportive” parts of the job. And if not, then we need to eliminate all of the stereotypically feminine tasks that the First Lady has been expected to give up her career to perform.
Ugh.
Right?? “Bill Clinton will not take on all of the traditional duties of the First Lady, which include picking out floral arrangements and china” — WHY NOT? Hillary did and she clearly had better shit to do with her time. Make him pick out the damn flowers. (And don’t let him get away with any Reddit-poster picking-out-hideous-flowers-on-purpose-so-you-won’t-ask him-to-do-it-next-time shit, either.)
I can imagine if Bill picked out hideous flowers to get out of picking flowers Hilary wouldn’t care and would continue to make him do it, and then The White House ends up with a tradition of hideously gaudy flower displays that continues for centuries.
I actually really really want him to pick out flowers and china because I bet he has TERRIBLE taste and I want to laugh at it. Tacky flowers for days. Arrangements full of dyed carnations! Edible arrangements as centerpieces!
On the other hand, the staff might really prefer working with an experienced social secretary. For the sake of the staff, I wish for them a person who knows what they are doing. That sounds like just the way to go forward, regardless of gender.
I assume that both Hillary and Michelle had a social secretary they trusted and they just initialed whatever the expert recommended.
Yeah, honestly, I would be surprised if “the First Lady picks out china patterns” has meant anything other than “the First Lady looks at the two china patterns suggested by a staff person and says ‘the one on the right, I think'” for a while now. But even so, I stand firm in the belief that now it is BILL’S job to say “the one on the right, I think.”
I’m not going to lie, I would not hire a social secretary. If my spouse were elected President, I would run to the White House Office of Protocol on like, the afternoon after the election and be like, “Let’s talk upholstery! And give me a book of the artwork from the National Gallery because it will take me until January to choose the art I want. Speaking of, can we get my favorite Picasso on loan from Philly? Make a call, please.”
I’m a strong, independent, progressive, fuck-your-gender binary, queer woman. And I would fly my mom to DC for 27 rounds of “Okay, this blue or this blue?” IT WOULD BE GLORIOUS
I have 100% daydreamed about this several times.
It’s like The Sims except you get to actually LIVE THERE.
Right? I mean, I’m just saying that, if I were in his shoes, I would be SO down for some flower arranging.
I really hope someone like you becomes First Spouse someday. 😀 I would be strongly inclined to do the same, except I would get the social secretary just to chat and argue endlessly. I mean, I want the professional’s opinion, but it doesn’t mean I’ll follow it!
Who needs a social secretary when you have a southern mother?
Truth
Edible arrangements as centerpieces!
…and what’s wrong with that?
Nothing at all, babycakes, you live your best life.
(But I’m for real gonna be cracking some jokes about it)
I just control+c’ed that same line to come here and be like MAKE BILL DO THIS DUMB JOB* TOO. I’m so glad multiple Toasties were already on the case.
*Actually, I could see picking out floral arrangements as kind of fun. Not china, though.
See, I’m the exact opposite. Flowers, I’m like, “as long as they smell good…? They’re all pretty.” My wedding flowers were Gerbera daisies, which I loved, but which maybe aren’t the fanciest or most creative thing ever, you know? But I love the idea of looking a china patterns, mixing and matching the colors of the patterns with one another and with the rest of the dining room decor.
I would love to see what Bill chose for both! I’m thinking Villeroy & Boch Acapulco would be a top china pick…
I kind of hope Bill gets **really** into though. Like, way too into it. He would go in thinking it was silly, but then become obsessive about the nuances of flowers and their Victorian meanings or something for diplomatic relations. And Hillary would be in the other room like, “why are you wasting your time with that?” But then he’d deliver a Sorkin-esq a soliloquy about the patriarchy that says it’s “women’s work” but everyone would vaguely nod along…
I think we can all agree that whether it’s this or another project, Bill really needs to be kept occupied, with an entire staff tracking him and keeping him accountable for it in a public way, for the entirety of his wife’s stay in the Oval Office.
BAKE SOME COOKIES BILL LET’S SEE YOUR RECIPE
mmm, french fry cookies!
tho i guess he’s all vegan and healthy now
probably would be oat bran flax cookies
whatever
SHOW US THEM!
I don’t see why french fry cookies wouldn’t be vegan…
Indeed that is true! But I think Bill’s off the fries these days too…
“I live on beans, legumes, vegetables, fruit.” -WJC
I just have to think his cookies would be a bit on the made-of-beans-not-actually-cookies side…
Though I suppose potatoes are vegetables!
Regardless, now I want french fries.
Parks and Rec managed it and Ben’s calzone got a fine reception!
“More importantly, I get to redefine what pie is!”
“I don’t know if that’s more important, but I like your energy!”
This is an interesting tech-industry sales problem. And I have to say… having interacted with the company in question a good deal over the last few months, I could totally see it being 100% true.
On the note of making furniture instead. I used to work at a door company. We customized, fabricated and/or wholesaled commercial doors to contractors in Austin. I was there about a year and I heard from the old gaurd that raises hadn’t been forthcoming in the last few years but it was otherwise actually a pretty good company to work for. I was expected to learn/parrot exactly zero bullshit company culture, our janitor got the same 13 an hour that the rest of us started at (three of which got promoted/moved elsewhere), half a dozen of us got bumped up into new positions in the 11 months I was there. Which is to say +1 for furniture making jobs.
I had a job back in the late 90s at a company called Trilogy, in Austin. It was the most toxic fucking place I’ve ever been, and I’ve worked for JPMorgan. People encouraged to sleep in offices, lie to clients, and ignore their families. The worst. My whole industry vertical got laid off in one day, and it was the very best day I had there.
Hm, this sounds a LOT like what my friend is dealing with right now. She’s just been shoved into a managerial position (without a pay-raise of any sort) after, like, four months with the company because turnover is so high and the CEO happens to like her. She did not get the opportunity to turn it down, and she still has to somehow meet her pre-promotion sales quota on top of actually managing her team.
I might have just purchased 2016-2017 season tickets so I can be first on the list for 2017-2018 season tickets and, more importantly, HAMILTON! tickets for the 2017-2018 season in Des Moines.
A+ decision-making
I’m moving back to my hometown, which is getting Hamilton in 2017-18, and you bet your sweet bippy that I’m saving up to buy season tickets.
They’re encouraging us to do the same in Portland.
Seattle too. The only problem is that I am pretty uninterested in the 2016-2017 season.
ME TOO
Oh no, that stinks! I’m seeing The Sound of Music (with my daughter, one of her favorites), Fun Home, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (what???), An American in Paris, and Mama Mia (also a favorite with my daughter). A pretty solid line-up, all things considered.
Dang, Broadway in Portland (and all the other city-based Broadways) are going to have record season ticket sales like they’ve never DREAMED about. Good for them.
OMG, I need to get on this! I heard the same arrangement is happening in Portland.
So this 93-year-old man met Kate and William. Obviously the royal family is not unproblematic, but I’m a sucker for stories about old people’s dreams coming true.
awwww
I mean, abolish the monarchy, overthrow the aristocracy, but awwww
oh god. I’m not weep smiling. I’ve just got something in my eye.
So I have been to his restaurant and the man goes around showing photos of and letters from royalty to customers. He even called me Kate (no idea why, I’m Indian) and asked if my husband was William or Harry!
Oh my God, he sounds AMAZINGLY adorable, I am so glad you got to meet him and then came here to tell us about it.
I met Prince Charles and Camilla in 2010 and it was amazing amazing amazing. They are both tiny and perfect. I mean, yeah, eat the rich, but her leather gloves were so buttery soft, and her hand felt like a tiny bird.
I saw it, but it just made me really sad and grumpy. I mean, yes, let’s all encourage the dreams of 93 year-olds, but the way the monarchy are still so deified is really, really creepy. Find another dream, Boman Kohinoor! The Royal Family are a disgusting example of unearned privilege!
I think it’s important to draw a line between criticizing an institution and not condescending/belittling strangers by telling them their dreams and passions are wrong. Especially in this case, he’s a 93-year-old Indian man who lives in India. I think he knows firsthand the effects of British colonialism in India, there’s not much you can teach him about that. Perhaps this is a good occasion to fall back on the Toast mantra “life is a rich tapestry” (and also the Judge John Hodgman mantra “people like what they like”).
Yes, you’re completely right that condescending to strangers (especially ones who are far better acquainted with the negative effects of colonialism than I am) is not at all the right approach. I just want to be wary of the “look at how cute it is that this man loves the monarchy so much!” narrative, because the monarchy – the principles it is founded upon, the fact that it exists – is horrifying, and cute feelgood stories make it very easy to overlook that.
(I am really shit at “life is a rich tapestry”. I have been trying really hard recently to be kinder and more open-minded about religion, and it’s been making me feel incredibly distressed and anxious and uncomfortable. I am not a good Toastie.)
So with you on that. I struggle to be more toast-worthy. Have a long way to go.
I was high last night and just started crying about how much I love Will and Kate and how they’re going to be such a positive influence on the country, and why can’t Charles just abdicate (QE2 is doing a bang-up job of trying to outlive her son, but still) so W&K can get to rulin’ already!?
The whole crying jag started, by the way, after seeing pics of Justin Trudeau attending a Sikh ceremony and wearing a turban and hugging an old lady, and I totally think of him as A New Hope for North America. And how it’s really cool to see this generation of rulers, whose parents were rulers and sometimes fucked up a lot, working hard to make better lives for THEIR children.
Also I am American and the monarchy affects me not at all, yet here we are.
No, this is how the monarchy tricks people! “Look, they’re young and reasonably attractive and have cute children; lets all get excited about how they’ll LITERALLY RULE US. You’re not allowed to speak before them in a conversation! You have to call them “Your Highness”! You have to bow/curtsey when meeting them! They have unimaginable levels of wealth and power! But it’s somehow so palatable when they’re photogenic!”
(Sorry, I am English and find the fact that people are still pro-monarchy horrifying and distressing.)
Y’know, I get it, and I’m not EXACTLY pro-monarchy as a blanket statement… but I have read a LOT of interviews with Wills over the years and he seems so thoughtful and kind and determined to live his life in a way that would make Diana proud. And now he and Kate (whom he married for LOVE!) are very clear that they want their children to live as normally as possible – they just seem like Good People, and we have few enough of those in office that I would be happy to see them as world leaders.
As opposed to, you know, America, where our options are (in order of Most Awful to Least Awful*) Trump, Cruz, Hillary, or a wonderful dude who won’t be able to get anything done because Congress will stop him at all turns.
*Trump and Cruz are tied for Most Awful.
man, Bill Clinton doesn’t come off too great in that (totally fascinating!!!) White House article. I was a kid/early teen when he was in office, like up to the age where I was just learning that we were on the same side, politically. Now that he’s back in the news it’s like daily revelations of…oh wow, how much truly bad behavior did we write off as “hahaha, skeevy Bill Clinton, that lovable raunchy goofball?” Even in that article there’s some “ugh, Bill” and some “aww, good ol’ Bill.”
Yep. It’s terrifying how much sexual assault the left (including myself, for many many years!) is willing to wave away with “Oh, that’s just Bill bein’ Bill.”
Just this week, I have seen so many “So a couple of adulterers and a child molester were trying to prosecute Bill for lying about sex lololololol” memes. Which, he was having sex with an intern in his office which is sexual harassment/misconduct.
It’s almost like people care about winning more than they care about the victims of sexual assault or something.
I too was a kid during Bill’s time and I remember the big scandal (Bill Clinton is how I learned about sperm! Thanks, news media!) and that my parents liked him better than… Dole? and therefore I liked him too. And then you know, his term ended, we got Bush, those are the years I remember clearly.
So it wasn’t until I lived overseas and people wanted to discuss US politics with me that I felt like I started to get actual opinions on Bill (unrelated to the scandal) and it seemed to universally be “Obama’s ok, Bush sucked, but Bill Clinton was THE BEST” and was he really?
Yeah, perfect example of the whole “his politics are GREAT, and sexual assault isn’t politics” phenomenon, even among people who graciously conceded that what he did was not exactly a consensual affair and he wasn’t, like, seduced into it by that temptress.
I’m just so glad he’s not running for President. I would HAVE to hold my nose and vote for him against Trump, but. Ugh. It puts holding my nose and voting for Kerry in perspective.
Yeah, the Bill years definitely introduced me to the concept of “adults are really weird sometimes.”
In ’96 I was in second grade, and our school had a mock election, and I was the kid who was quiet and observed everything, and when we were at the mock polls I overheard my teach “whisper” to another teacher something like “I think I’m gonna vote for Bill ’cause he’s looking really good this year, hahahaha” and I was confused.
Then when the Monica stuff was going on, I was with my mom at the supermarket and there were the usual tabloids by the checkout, and one of them had a cover about the Blue Dress, and I didn’t even see any details, just that they seemed to be all worked up about a dress, but my mom saw where my gaze was and turned me away, and I was confused.
That reddit guy is the absolute worst, though unfortunately i have dated guys like him too many times. It’s a scary world out there full of that reddit guy …
However it lead me to this gem “my sister is pissed off because i changed my name by deed poll, after she named her baby after me”
<link> ;https://www.reddit.com/r/relationships/comments/4efi7w/me_28f_my_sister_has_disowned_me_because_i/</link>
The sister in that post sounds just TERRIBLE. Who says “too bad” after you ask someone not to name their baby after you??????
Your link is broken, plus the OP has deleted her original story/complaint, but you can piece most of it together from the comments, and holy crap. https://www.reddit.com/r/relationships/comments/4…
You guys YOU GUYS!!!! Nadiya from Bake Off is going to write for Harlequin!!! http://www.thebookseller.com/news/gbbos-nadiya-hu…
So gonna read this
THIS IS MY FAVORITE THING
I WAS JUST WONDERING ABOUT HER LAST NIGHT AND THEN I WOKE UP TO THIS. There needs to be a party in the SmartBitches comments when this comes out.
shutupandtakemymoney.gif
!!?!?!!!!!
I will buy anything she writes; she is like the human equivalent of Too Cute Puppies.
My boyfriend has been slowly turning into that redditor (except he does still work) and I don’t want to get super gripey but basically it is not so slowly killing our relationship and he can’t seem to understand that the big shift is that he went from “contributing financially and houseworkly” to “my whiny teenage son who only wants to eat ramen and play video games” and I think it would all be less frustrating if maybe he’d always been a toad but he wasn’t and idek.
Duuuuuude. I’m sorry. I have so much sympathy for straight women who are in relationships with guys who are good guys. But they have been taught by their family of origin and just, you know, SOCIETY that if they do one damn chore they are a HERO. And if they do nothing they are just status quo and normal and women LIKE cleaning, don’t they?
That sucks! This might explain what’s happening in words he can understand.
I dunno. It seems like he gets it when he talks about men needing to be partners in household management:
“But I remember my wife often saying how exhausting it was for her to have to tell me what to do all the time…
But she didn’t want to be my mother. She wanted to be my partner, and she wanted me to apply all of my intelligence and learning capabilities to the logistics of managing our lives and household.
She wanted me to figure out all of the things that need done, and devise my own method of task management.”
But then he says this:
“I don’t have to understand WHY she cares so much about that stupid glass.
I just have to understand and respect that she DOES. Then caring about her = putting glass in dishwasher.”
You DO have to understand why she cares so much. Otherwise, it’s just, “You’re absolutely right, dude. But do it to humour her. Women, who can figure ’em out. They’re so irrational.” It’s such a strange comment coming so soon after his apparent understanding of why that glass matters.
Oh, good point. I wonder if he’s trying to get through to guys who avoid doing stuff by pretending they need to understand exactly what the point of it is before they’ll agree, and then conveniently not accepting any explanations until the other person gives up, because those dudes need to be dealt with. But they still need to understand it eventually.
Yeah, that’s what I got out of it, too. I don’t like the way it’s framed, but I get that he’s speaking to the sort of guys who actually do think like this, and it might be a useful way of explaining it to them.
True. Baby steps.
eeks. I hope that this goes well for you. Hugs are here if you want ’em.
An acquaintance just got laid off from his job, and his wife is all “just leave the friggin house, man, when we met you were interesting but all you do is sit on the couch and whine at me for attention, GO BE WITH YOUR FRIENDS”. How on earth is it possible that so many adult males mate and then just regress into children?
IDK, that sounds like a pretty normal depressive response to something as destructive to your sense of self/worth as getting suddenly laid off. Not saying it’s healthy or helpful, but it doesn’t sound like the insanely entitled LW above, or the creeping laziness that hannahfish is describing.
ETA: That said, I certainly agree with your last sentence!
Ooof, yeah, that is actually something that I had not considered, ty for the check.
I don’t see him or interact with this dude enough to better judge if it is depression or creeping laziness, but I have little patience for this dude. One of my first interactions with him was when his bestie said “he doesn’t get a mic, he tells racist jokes with them” and I was like “O no you don’t” and he was like “yeah, they are hilarious because i don’t mean them” and I was like “no they are not” and he was like “but this one!” and PROCEEDED TO TELL ME A RACIST JOKE. When he noticed my coldasice expression, he was like “well it was funny in the movie i heard it in” and then we got to have a nice, long conversation about why white ppl don’t get to tell racist jokes. Ever. Especially when they have a fucking microphone in front of their face. But especially ever.
He also talks _incessantly_ even though he is dumb and uninformed about everything i have ever heard him opine about and he especially enjoys talking over me. So if he’s depressed, I feel like a jerk because i also feel like “depressed” might also be “coming to the realization that he is a jerk”.
Look, his current situation (laying about all day, not wanting to leave the house) might be because he’s depressed.
But, like, he’s still an asshole. He’s an asshole for all the things he did before this layoff. Going through a really difficult situation does not earn your redemption for past obnoxious behavior. If he’s coming to the realization he’s a jerk (please LORD let that be the case) then, good.
Ugh, yeah, totally understand why benefit of the doubt is not the first thing this guy gets from you. He sounds terrible!
True. I will say that as a person with some depression issues who was also socialized female, my messy depressive self is also self-entertaining (I will leave dishes and dirty laundry in places, I will not leave the house, I will eat all of the peanut butter with a spoon and then feel gross, but I will also play video games for hours and read long fantasy novels). Mostly, depression for me, a female person, involves being very isolated and grey and absorbed in things that don’t involve me thinking about how much life is terrible, and not having time/energy for other people, as is opposed to needing my partner to entertain me. I wonder if there is a gender divide here? Is it just an extrovert/introvert thing? Or maybe I just want to point out that not everyone with mental illnesses is an asshole. 😉
Well you just described me perfectly (except replace peanut butter with hummus) so I think you may be on to something.
Yeah this sounds like me. Depression, in my past experience, hasn’t meant becoming a drag on other people, it’s meant mostly checking out from them and not showing up as much in my friendships/relationships. Which is not good, but also not draining for other people in my life.
The Emotional Labor Thread explained it pretty well: A lot of guys learn that emotional labor is something you do at the beginning of a relationship, and that one of the major goals/benefits of having a relationship is that you can offload that labor onto your (female) partner and never have to do it ever again. Like, acting like a grownup is the cover charge to get into the club, but once you’re in the club, everything’s free, right?
And their female partners think “I met this guy, and he was so good when we met–what happened? What did I do that made him change? What can I do to make him be that great guy again?” Like, for him emotional labor is the price of admission, and for her it’s an ongoing expectation.
NB: These are not hardwired essentialist behaviors. These are just (just!) reinforced in all of our friggin’ cultural narratives, is all.
So depressing because it’s so true and I cannot think of a way to avoid it if I end up with a dude.
This is why I continously embarrass my children (19 and 15)by saying that if I ever do start dating it will only be because I want a boy toy. But I’ll never pick up another pair of boxers off the floor again as soon as the 15 year old leaves the house. And he will leave.
That is…so depressing. And it makes me feel so extraordinarily lucky to have a spouse that listens to me when I ask him to share emotional labor with me and who continues to work at our relationship together. And then I get mad because that should be like the bare minimum for everyone, seriously, and why AM I so lucky that I have a partner who is interested in having conversations with me instead of tuning me out and watching baseball or whatever?
Ugggh and even on the minor stuff, too. When we were dating it was all “let’s do this cool thing!” and now that we’re cohabiting it’s become “I dunno, what do you wanna do?”
I actually had this exact conversation with my therapist last week (more with regards to “why doesn’t he talk to/compliment me anymore?” than “why doesn’t he do shit around the house?”) and she said “well this is a thing a lot of guys do, where they stop making an effort after they’re in a relationship” and it was one of the most depressing therapy sessions I have ever had.
I’ve had this convo with friends where their partners stop making effort re: sex and I find that somehow even more depressing. Like the idea of women’s pleasure goes entirely out the window and sex becomes entirely all about the dude once they’ve landed you and don’t have to care anymore.
Doesn’t match my own experience, but happened to a friend with two guys in a row. WTF.
Thinking about the Reddit guy and chore distribution, an interesting study (which I’m sure has been done) would be to ask each person in a couple which chores they do or what the distribution is if they share a chore. The discrepancies would be fascinating.
I suspect people would be meticulous in listing what they do and forget large swaths of what their partner did.
This study HAS been done and people definitely overestimate their own contributions while underestimating their partner’s! I can’t find it right now but I’m sure someone else can.
I suspected as much since when I listed out chores my wife and I do I gave myself credit for “Tiger attack prevention” but left “Grocery shopping” off her list.
Yes, whenever I get annoyed that I, for example, make and clean up after between two and three meals every single day, I try to remember that, in the event of a zombie apocalypse, my husband will be bashing in the majority of the heads.
*adds chore on my side of the list*
I suspect that in the event of a zombie apocalypse I will be bashing in the majority of heads. Better bring that up in my favour next time I get cross with my partner for not doing his fair share of household tasks.
I can’t remember where I read it, but I saw a post — reddit? advice column letter? something like that — by a dude where he presented his household situation as “I do a few labor-intensive, hugely important household tasks, and my wife does all the mundane chores like dishes, but now she’s trying to claim that some frivolous stuff she does for her own reasons, like sending Christmas cards, is equal to my chores so I should do some of the dishes also.” Only the only task he actually identified that he did was: the taxes. Obviously he just momentarily forgot about tiger attack prevention, that should have been on his list as well.
Ah yes, that was Mallory!Prudie .
All I’m saying is that we’ve never been attacked by tigers but we’re often out of various foods.
Clearly one of us is slacking.
This doesn’t address underestimating your partner’s contribution (and isn’t the study but a reference to it), but I think it’s important to note that the overestimating isn’t equal. From Michael Kimmel’s Angry White Men, “men overreport (the amount of housework they do) by about 150%, women by about 68%.”
https://books.google.ca/books?id=HU8eBQAAQBAJ&…
Not sure if this is the study you’re thinking of, but here they find men think they’re doing more (and experience negative emotions due to that perception) and women experience more negative emotions when they perceive they’re doing less than their (male) partner.
http://emotionresearcher.com/wp-content/uploads/2… http://spq.sagepub.com/content/73/4/358.short
My husband and I tried a thing where we gave ourselves points for all the chores we did and then reward (where 1 point = 20 minutes of work, and 5 points ~= $1 to spend, which may be undervaluing our time but we felt accomplished), and it worked pretty well! The nice thing was the reality-check, that we would tell the other what we did and how many points we got, and it helped us realize what the other was doing
Oh, that’s a good idea!
PLEASE listen to The Black Tapes Podcast, I need more company on this crazy train
I cannot wait until it comes back.
I really couldn’t get into Tanis, though. I need more upside down faces in my horror podcasts than it was willing to give me.
I’M SO UPSET THAT ALEX AND STRAND HAVE BOTH COMPLETELY LOST THEIR MINDS.
AND ALSO THAT THEY HAVEN’T SMOOCHED YET.
I have observed the Hum! Late at night, not near any of the places mentioned in the article.
I don’t really think it’s anything weird: either it’s some actual distant mechanical work, or something in the ear or brain that misinterprets silence or soft, distant noise as a low-pitched hum.
It must be much louder for other people, if it’s causing them such tsouris.
Yeah I don’t know if The Hum is any different to what I called ‘the sound of silence’ as a child, i.e. a low, constant noise I’d only hear when it was quiet, usually when I was about to fall asleep. I have tinnitus now and also live in a city, so I don’t get it as much, but when I go and visit my parents sometimes I’m still aware of it. It never bothered me, I figured everyone heard it. Maybe I’m identifying something that everyone does hear and The Hum is different, or maybe I just interpreted The Hum differently to people that it bothers? No way of knowing I suppose.
Yeah, at this point in my life I assume any low, constant noise that can’t be attributed to a source is latent ear damage. Though mine’s usually at a much higher pitch than these people are describing the Hum…
Initially, when I saw this, I thought it was people talking about the really high-pitched whining sound some electronics make, especially televisions when the screen is on but the box is off, or certain security scanners at public buildings like courts and libraries that haven’t been replaced since the 90’s. Those are loud and annoying. But you can hear them over ambient sounds, and there’s a clear source, so obviously that’s not what the Hum is.
I get the hum and normally it is the result of Something Electronic Plugged into a Socket and it’s resolved by unplugging said item or turning it off at the wall. My partner gets woken by the hum that starts once his iphone is fully charged.
I am totally fascinated by The Hum as a) a total nerd b) a geophysicist c) a person who has voluntarily turned the earth’s magnetic fields into audio files for fun. (Most often, the magnetic field DOES kind of sound like a diesel car idling in the distance, but this is after MUCH manipulation on my part.) The Independent posits that it is seismic activity, which makes some sense – but then why do only some people hear it? And why does it seem to come and go at certain times of the day? More research is clearly needed! I am pretty sure it is NOT VLF waves. There should be easier ways to verify this than building a coffin-box and then never standing inside it. There are maybe a dozen or so VLF transmitters in the world and they are pretty well known locations, so you could pretty easily correspond hum hearers to VLF transmitter locations. Also VLF (“very low frequency”) waves are only “low” in relation to other radio waves, not audio waves; if anyone was hearing VLF transmissions, they’d hear a very high-pitched sound, not a low rumble. ANYWAY I AM FASCINATED AND SORRY FOR RAMBLING. Hi Toasties, you are all awesome.
Buffy Sainte-Marie! Wakefield is the town I grew up in! That excerpt….. sounds familiar, yeah. We still have the terrible mascot. We don’t have the majorettes anymore, but I think they were replaced in the social hierarchy by the poms squad.
Reading the rest of the article- my mom grew up here too, and from what she’s said it was a much more blue-collar, insular town in those days, but now it’s become more of a typical middle/upper-middle class commuter suburb. Still 95% white, though, & probably still not a great place for an adopted native girl to grow up.
Scott Brown might be more typical of famous WHS grads, but Buffy’s definitely the best (of a pretty short list, to be fair). I’m glad there’s a biography of her out there.
I have learned a new term today from the Guardian article!
Whataboutery: the practice of responding to a difficult question or problem by raising another difficult question or problem, in order to deflect attention from the original question
What these examples show is that the employers of whataboutery are uncomfortable with the subject under discussion and wish to shift the argument elsewhere.
Yes, I’m looking forward to dropping “Enough of your whataboutery!” into conversation. Especially conversation with yet another supplicant to the Temple of Male Frustration.
Thank you for looking it up! I was interested but too lazy to search. It is an excellent word.
“But what about the me–”
“AND WHAT ABOUT YOUR WHATABOUTERY, SIR?”
Aaaah probably too late to make an impact but DID ANYONE SEE THIS
https://www.reddit.com/r/legaladvice/comments/34l…
https://www.reddit.com/r/legaladvice/comments/34m…
Possibly this has been linked to before, in which case sorry for repeating. My mind is blown! (Also, one of my greatest fears, argh)
HOLY SHIT.
That is some wild shenanigans. (Also a fear of mine!)
Have you read The Poisoner’s Handbook, by Deborah Blum? It has a whole section on carbon monoxide poisoning in the days of leaky gas lamps.
PBS did a great film version, too, which they have online: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/…
Some freaky stuff, but sooooooo fascinating!
holy shit
I occasionally kick the CO detector in our bedroom while getting out of bed. After reading that, I think I’m going to go kiss it.
Right? I have five detectors all over the house, they plug in to outlets AND have battery back-ups and it still freaks me out.
Did you read the thread where people were sharing stories of the weird stuff they did on Ambien? Some (most) of them are hilarious.
The first time I took Ambien I cut my hair (hey! why not try bangs?! Oh, THAT’S why.) then watched the ceiling fan scuttle around like a crab until I fell asleep. Fun!
holy shit!!!
I saw this a while ago and it is so scary! Carbon monoxide poisoning is terrifying.
Dachshunds playing hockey: https://www.facebook.com/crusoedachshund/videos/1…
Their little arms!
I have not experienced the Bristol Hum, but for the last year or so – I swear it wasn’t there when I moved in – there had been a really annoying hum in my street. I think it is frrom an extractor fan, but the way the sound bounces off buildings makes it impossible for me to locate it properly. Sometimes it is quiet or non-existent, but it is frequent and intrusive enough that I cannot open my bedroom window at night, which in summer makes me utterly furious.
The university I went to had a particular building whose west side and courtyard were full of an incredibly annoying hum with no obvious point of origin. I think it might have been fans of some kind on the roof or side of the building, maybe. And I never did work up the courage to ask if anyone else could hear it. Mystery noises are weird.
When Mr. Delperro and I were dating, I cooked him a fairly elaborate meal. We were sitting in my kitchen enjoying the end of the wine, and he looked at me, without prompting and said. “OK, I’ll do the dishes now.”
I would have married him on the spot.
Fascinating but terrifying piece from the Guardian about an evangelical Christian upbringing and the apocalypse: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/apr/05/reli…
That was truly terrifying.
I live on a bluff overlooking a broad river valley, and when I first moved there I was puzzled by a deep, rhythmic bass throbbing really late at night; it didn’t sound like someone with a subwoofer in their trunk, which I verified by stepping outside. Eventually, I figured it out: a railroad line runs near the base of the bluff, and the sound had been conducted up through the stone.
I must express my love for that diagram of giant enormous Terrorbirds. Don’t you ever wish you lived in a time when such creatures still existed? That picture is a beautiful and wondrous thing.
Someone, somewhere, I can’t remember, made a creationist comment that they thought it was stupid to think dinosaurs turned into birds (therefore evolution not real, natch) and I was just like HAVE YOU SEEN AN EMU*!? Those things are so obviously theropods. They’re terrifying.
* should have used Ostrich if that diagram is accurate, they’re bigger than I thought. I’ve seen emus in real life though, so thats what came to mind.
It’s sadly lost in the mists of the internet I was thiiis close to picking up a free muscovy duck on craigslist. Free because it wass bullying the other ducks and there was a photo of this particularly ill tempered muscovy and thats when it really clicked. This duck was clearly a dinosaur. The dinosaurs had been hiding in plain sight the whole time.
“Trump is known to prefer well-done steaks…”
That’s got to lose him some votes, yes?
The Redditor reminds me of a man who once told me that he should not be expected to do housework nor criticized for not doing it because he was male and he was not conditioned that way. Well, dude, RECONDITION yourself! It CAN be done!
I read r/relationships religiously and there are so many dirtbags looking for validation! It’s bananas!
(me reading the forum so much is also why I noticed that this Dear Prudence letter from today (Interested in my departed friend’s husband) is the same as this r/relationships post from 3 days ago. I feel cheated!)
*raises hand* I also… read r/relationships religiously.
I enjoy sorting by “controversial” and following around my boyfriend while reading the posts out loud. There was a really good one a couple days ago of a husband who keeps hiding his overworked, pregnant wife’s KitchenAid mixer because he’s afraid he’ll bump into it and break it. The rest of the thread was him making feeble excuses as to why he simply cannot possibly learn how to cook and doesn’t know how to portion out a meal from the leftovers his wife makes.
Sorry, that is long. But!!! I mean!!!
Sansa is clearly posed for her dust jacket photo in today’s picture.
I am always super late to the Link Roundups, but seeing The Hum article reminded me of my favourite mystery/conspiracy theory: The Bloop! The NOAA has said that it’s likely just from Antarctic ice shearing, but there is still speculation from other groups that it’s from a sea monster and the big bad government is trying to cover it up https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloop
Ugh, yeah, totally understand why benefit of the doubt is not the first thing this guy gets from you. He sounds terrible!