Seconds before disaster.
If your in-laws respond in this way to your decision to adopt a child, you are 100% in your rights to never speak to them again/set them on fire:
However, my husband’s parents have not been as enthusiastic as I had hoped. The week after we announced our plans, they gave me a ton of brochures about in-vitro and fertility treatments, as well as information about embryo adoption. I politely explained that the same condition which makes it difficult for me to conceive makes it more likely that I’ll have a miscarriage. I also explained that we had already submitted the first part of our application, and were committed to adoption.
Explaining all of this seemed to put the issue to rest, until the holidays. While we were visiting them, I accidentally overheard my husband’s mother say some pretty unkind things about me and my body (the same condition which limits my fertility also makes it harder for me to manage my weight), as well as suggesting that my husband should divorce me and find someone who can give him children. She doesn’t know I heard her say this.
In the months since then, my inlaws have insinuated that they don’t (and won’t) consider adopted children to be “real” grandchildren, even asking me point blank why I would want to take care of “someone else’s child”.
On coming out as a gay children’s book writer:
The realization usually sparks all kinds of curiosity about the life of that flesh-and-blood person and there is always — no matter the school, no matter the region — a child who raises her hand and asks me, with an absolute un-self-conscious need-to-know, “Are you married?”
The easy answer, in the beginning, would’ve been a simple “no.” Well, not a simple “no,” but a true one. I wasn’t married. But I wasn’t married only because same-sex marriage wasn’t legal. I wasn’t married because the love of my life was another man.
The first time I was asked was at an elementary school in Houston. I’m not sure how long I paused after the question, standing silent in front of my PowerPoint staring at the gap-toothed child who’d asked me. I remember the thoughts that passed through my head at that moment, because they passed through my head again and again in visit after visit over the years.
I am quoting two parts of the essay bc I love this so much:
In many cases, I was the first “out” adult these kids had ever met. In Norman, Oklahoma, a little boy waited until after the presentation to talk to me. With nervous glances at the other kids still standing around us, he told me that he was gay and that he was happy to see how confident I was, how it made him feel like he could be confident. “Like I could have a good future too,” he said.
Joseph Boyden (who is a phenomenal indigenous author, check out his novels) on Attawapiskat, colonialism, intergenerational trauma, and despair (it is, unsurprisingly, a difficult piece to read, and references child sexual assault):
I first tried to take my own life on my 16th birthday. It was a serious attempt. I lay down in front of a car speeding toward me. I believe I understand what it is like for an Indigenous youth, albeit a mixed-blood one in an urban setting, to feel despair so crushing you don’t want to live anymore. The difference is, I was immediately swarmed with the best medical attention. When I was able to walk again, I was made to see a psychiatrist for the next number of years. I was given medications and all form of support and counselling and help. Why are the people I love up north not getting this same help in times of deep crisis?
Yes, these are rural places and the costs of physical and mental health care rise in these areas. But remote areas like the Cree homeland of Mushkegowuk lie atop some of the richest diamond and chromite deposits in the world, and companies like diamond giant DeBeers have huge extraction operations like Victor Mine, not far from Attawapiskat. I have no doubt that the Victor Mine site has top-notch physical and mental health care facilities. The mine couldn’t operate without them. DeBeers has the obligation to keep its employees, who toil 90 km from Attawapiskat, in top physical and mental health. They would be shut down if they didn’t. DeBeers certainly wouldn’t let that happen. Yet the people who have the most right to profit from what is being taken out of their homeland live in Third World conditions amidst another wave of attempted suicides with no accredited mental health workers living in the community. This past Monday, after the state of emergency was declared, 13 youth were taken to hospital who’d made a pact to kill themselves. Something is deeply broken, not only in the community, but in how we allow business to operate as usual.
So many colleges treat students who report their assaults like this, and it’s mind-bogglingly wrong:
“You still get investigated. That’s what’s so frustrating,” Barney, who gave the Tribune permission to use her full name, said. “I was raped, and I waited four days to report because I was so terrified about my standing at BYU.”
Barney is one of several other students who say the college effectively punishes people who come forward with their stories, including one who woman who says she was kicked out of school because officials learned she was on acid during her alleged rape. They argue the school should grant immunity to those who file sexual assault allegations.
But at a recent rape awareness conference at BYU, the school’s Title IX coordinator Sarah Westerberg said her office would “not apologize” for referring abuse cases to the Honor Code Office for additional discipline.
“In a room full of rape survivors, she said, ‘We do not apologize for this,’” Barney said. “I said, ‘You don’t apologize for threatening to kick a rape victim out of school?’”
I wonder a lot about women (men too) who find themselves in this position:
I’m a woman in an industry that’s typically male-dominated. Recently I was interviewed about a project I worked on and spoke about the historic sexism in the industry and my company’s goals to be more feminist and inclusive.
Well. You’d think I said I liked to kick babies for fun. Certain sections of the internet have exploded with hate against me. My company has been flooded with threats and harassment. I’ve had to completely shut down my internet presence.
Fortunately my company has been amazing and totally standing behind me. I’ve been thinking, though, of what I’ll do when I eventually move on. I doubt there’s a company in the industry that hasn’t heard of me at this point. If I want to look for new opportunities in a year, two years, five years, how do I handle it? Not mention the incident unless they ask? Address it in the cover letter? Or wait and bring it up in the interview?
Do I warn the company that any public presence on my part might bring them unwanted attention? It’s true, but I don’t think many people want to hire a stick of dynamite.
The push to turn churches into condos (I am a SUCKER for houses that used to be churches, personally, bc they look cool and weird):
The fight over 361 CPW is symptomatic of New York City’s residential real estate boom—Manhattan property hit an all-time peak of $1,497 per square foot in the third quarter of 2015. The boom has meant that most any kind of building, from factories to firehouses, carriage barns, schools, and corporate offices, is liable to turn into condos, like a creeping architectural plague. Churches are the latest targets. A 2012 Wall Street Journal articlenoted the mounting popularity of such “religious conversions.” A record $1.3 billion worth of religious properties were sold in 1,502 sales in 2014, according to the Christian Post; 2010 saw just 889 sales worth $578.9 million. Though the exact numbers of church-to-condo conversions aren’t tracked, “we tend to see it occur during development booms where the availability of building sites is limited but demand for anything with a roof over it is high,” says Jonathan Miller, the New York real estate appraiser.
Call the church conversion a “chondo,” to coin an inelegant portmanteau. The same qualities that once made churches cultural and artistic centers—their central locations in neighborhoods, their size, their vast windows and cavernous chambers—also make them perfect for a real estate market that commodifies light and space in the crowded city.
Speaking as a Harvard Man, The Porc is a club for rich losers and this is stupid and offensive and also I think they should stay single-sex if they want bc why let the infection spread and also I know at LEAST one guy who was raped at an all-male final club so let’s not pretend that they’re a bastion of safety:
Storey told the Crimson that forcing the Porcellian to accept women, as some other final clubs already have, would make sexual assaults more likely. After all, women can’t be sexually assaulted if they aren’t there.
“Given our policies, we are mystified as to why the current administration feels that forcing our club to accept female members would reduce the incidence of sexual assault on campus,” Storey wrote. “Forcing single gender organizations to accept members of the opposite sex could potentially increase, not decrease the potential for sexual misconduct….
This scene from Freaks and Geeks is my whole heart:
The very best scenes in film and television function perfectly well without any context, and this one is no different. You don’t need to know who this character is in relation to the rest of the series because the scene tells you who he is. He’s alone, and as the voice of Pete Townshend confirms over the soundtrack, he’s a loser with no chance to win. He makes a small meal for himself—a grilled cheese sandwich with a brownie and a glass of milk—and walks over to the couch to watch TV. He laughs himself silly watching Garry Shandling perform stand-up. It’s implied that this is a frequent occurrence in his household, but it’s also implied that he’s fine with it. For a brief moment in time, he’s one with himself, happy and free, and he’s sharing something with a friend, even if there’s a screen between them.
When regression happens (in a minority of kids on the spectrum), it can SEEM like it happens overnight, I get it. I was once talking to a guy whose daughter regressed significantly the day after her 18 month vaccination appointment. Twist: they had cancelled the appointment bc one of them was sick, so she didn’t get the shots that day. He said that if she HAD gotten her shots, he 100% would have been convinced it was the vaccines and no one could have convinced him otherwise. But it doesn’t change the science:
De Niro said his wife believes their son, who has autism, “changed overnight” after being vaccinated. “I don’t remember. But my child is autistic, and every kid is different. But there’s something there, there’s something there that people aren’t addressing. And for me to get so upset here, on the Today show, with you guys, means there’s something there. That’s all I wanted, for the movie to be seen. You can make your own judgment. There are other films that document and show —it’s not such a simple thing.”
The hosts gently asked De Niro if he knew there’s a broad scientific consensus that vaccines don’t cause autism.
“I believe it’s much more complicated,” he answered.
not really, that would be different, bc your eggs coming from further away than you thought is different from bigamy:
“They say if you spend your money locally, it gets multiplied three times,” said Michael Novilla, who owns Nova 535 event space in St. Petersburg and tries to buy local, from soup to soap.
He was speaking of the local multiplier effect, a term coined in the 1930s by economist John Maynard Keynes. And part of Novilla’s motivation is health, finding clean sources for the food he eats. So if he found out markets and restaurants he loved were playing fast and loose with the truth?
“It would be like finding out your husband was married to someone else the whole time.”
OKAY BUT BACK OFF MY HOUSE WINE:
I have been a restaurant critic since 1991 and have always known there are fraudulent menu claims. This “housemade dessert” is Sysco’s Fudgy Wudgy chocolate layer cake I’ve eaten a dozen times. That “fresh snapper” has done serious freezer time. I know about the St. Petersburg restaurant that refilled Evian bottles with tap, the fancy Tampa restaurant where the “house wine” is a dump of open bottles on their last legs.
Miles: Also, another really bad time is, you look at Anthony and Tracee and they’re just chillin’ in their trailers and we have to be at school.
Marsai: They have an hour lunch and we just have 30 minutes. It’s just crazy.
Hudson: [Randall Park] and [Constance Wu], same thing!
Miles: You just see [Laurence Fishburne] chillin’ in his trailer, watching ESPN.
Marsai: And the worst thing is, he says “School is for suckers” all the time.
sorry:
