Doing link roundups is hard. Come back, Nicole!
Why midcentury Americans believed the suburbs were making them sick
ohhh my God
In a notebook entry dated 6 August 2013, two weeks after she lost her way, Largay made a desperate plea: “When you find my body, please call my husband George and my daughter Kerry,” she wrote. “It will be the greatest kindness for them to know that I am dead and where you found me – no matter how many years from now. Please find it in your heart to mail the contents of this bag to one of them.”
NIKKI IS WRITING A BOOK
“After the rediscovery of a 19th-century novel, our view of black female writers is transformed”
Two years ago, I was in the United Kingdom working on a follow-up project for my books “Black London” and “Black Victorians/Black Victoriana.” While looking through old British newspapers, I was astonished to read an 1893 announcement in The Daily Telegraph proclaiming Sarah E. Farro to be “the first negro novelist” with the publication of her novel “True Love.”
I wondered: who was this woman? And why didn’t we know about this reportedly groundbreaking novel?
The Daily Telegraph didn’t get it exactly right: we know now that Farro wasn’t the first African-American novelist. Nonetheless, she appears nowhere in the canon of African-American literature.
ohhhh MY GOD
“Even just a little bit of sleep deprivation, in this case, six rather than eight hours of sleep across two weeks, accumulates to jaw-dropping results. Cumulative sleep deprivation isn’t a new concept by any means, but it’s rare to find research results that are so clear about the effects.”
The Ice Age is finally ending on Mars!
Oh lord that Appalachian Trail story is horrifying. That poor woman.
Not even going to try reading it. Nope nope nope.
I have opened it and am not sure I want to actually read it!
The missed opportunities on that one, ouch. So sad.
“In total the walk took about 30 minutes.”
Well, that’s what I’m thinking about for the rest of the day!
This exact line feels like it’s the end of every story of someone getting lost in the woods. “If they had just made a three-quarters turn to the left and walked five steps, they’d have seen [landmark] and been home in an hour.” But bless her, she seemed like she’d done everything she could think of.
That’s what’s so scary about all of these stories – that once you’re off the trail, surrounded by trees, you could be within a few metres of safety and not realise. It sounds so easy just to get hopelessly lost. (I am used to the south-east of England, where woods are not that dense and you can be pretty confident that you will hit a road or useful landmark if you just walk for a short time in one direction. New England sounds terrifying.)
It is horrifying but also a little joyous? I mean, starving to death is perhaps the worst way to go, but she died doing exactly what she wanted to, what she loved, what made her feel free. And it sounds like her last days were spent at peace; she wasn’t crashing around the brush in terror. I hope her family finds comfort in her writings those last days. I hope when I go I have my wits about me enough to sit and write letters to all the people I love.
I’m really confused and I don’t want to sound like I’m victim blaming at ALL because she REALLY did everything she could to get help, but can somebody please explain to me why she walked three miles off the trail in order to pee?
I thought the same thing, except about where her matches and/or firestarter were. And then I mentally slapped myself.
a) no, i cannot, but
b) i think she didn’t walk that far, but took a wrong turn, and then walked farther after peeing?
I’m guessing she eventually wound up 3 miles off the trail over the course of the several weeks she was lost. Probably she went out of sight of the trail to pee, went back in the wrong direction, realized she was lost, then hiked in different directions trying to find her way back.
She went just off the trail to pee, then got turned around and went in the wrong direction.
That’s the worst part of the story for me: leave the trail just a little, just for a few minutes, and you get swallowed up by the wilderness.
its horrible but I also do not understand at all how someone who’d even attempt the AT could spend 26 days not finding civilization, anywhere on the East Coast
She was in Maine, which I think is a pretty deserted part of the trail. I also wonder if she wasn’t getting enough food and she lost the ability to think clearly, or the energy to move, at a certain point.
Those are the only two things I can come up with. I don’t know that part of the trail, but things can be really quiet in Maine.
Yeah, Maine is the least-densely populated state east of the Mississippi River and the AT runs through some of the least populated parts of our great, beautiful, rural-as-fuck state (like the Hundred Mile Wilderness). It is, sadly, not at all surprising to me that you could very easily be lost for weeks or more.
Did anyone read Carrot Quinn’s book? (She’s written on The Toast before). It’s like a stream of consciousness journal about her PCT hike, and at one moment she can’t find the trail after going to the bathroom, and you feel that spike in panic, but then she finds it, and you’re like, yeah if this is just a regular day, hiking is terrifying
North Woods Law (my favorite tv show, about the Maine Game Wardens) did an episode about the search efforts when she first went missing and it really emphasized how remote it is on that area of the trail and how much of an effort was made to find her. It’s crazy how close she was the whole time. I’m glad her family finally has closure.
Yes, I am not sure I made the right choice when clicking on it. But now I have resolved – always pee in sight of the trail, esp. if hiking alone. Screw modesty, better someone should see my unmentionables than I die alone in the woods.
This is why I never hike along unless I’m on a well-marked trail with high traffic. I know someone who disappeared while hiking in the woods, his body was never found. It’s my worst nightmare.
Never Hike Alone.
Never Hike Alone.
Never.
Hike.
Alone.
I went to work after a sleepless red-eye home from L.A. last summer, and was so loopy and distractible that I felt drunk. I mentioned this to my therapist recently, like, “It was kind of awesome! I was funny, and had less of a filter, and wasn’t worrying about the future because I only had enough energy to focus on this moment.” And then I had a realization, and said, “Is this is what people without anxiety feel like all the time?” And he said, “Yes.”
Uh, I don’t think people without anxiety are also SUPER TIRED and have no energy. I mean, not that I would know…
Of course not – I meant the less-inhibited, in-the-present-moment part of it.
I don’t feel like that even when I’m on anti-anxiety meds* and now I feel sort of cheated by the universe.
(*I take Ativan for my fear of flying, but nothing on a regular basis, and it just makes me sleepy and groggy and flat.)
I take an SSRI for anxiety and it was like a complete revelation. I’m not exactly a freewheeling carefree font of carpe-diem, but I was pretty bowled over by the difference. Like, people can just…do things?…without stressing about every single possible outcome of every tiny detail and all the things that will totally go wrong?!
Yes! I recently started trazadone and setraline, and I suddenly understand how it is people can cope with life.
Drugs are wonderful 😀
That was the most amazing moment for me- when I realized my anti-anxiety meds were working. I was waiting for the bus, I had been ten minutes early (obv.) and the bus was running a little late and I wasn’t panicked. I could sit there and wait for the bus without falling apart! (of course I had budgeted in about an hour extra time to get where I was going because old habits die hard, but that was the point! I didn’t need to be there an hour early, I had that hour to spare!)
Wait, budgeting an extra hour to be sure you get there on time is because of anxiety? I thought it was just being half German.
I’ve only taken low doses of Valium a couple of times because of shit happening to me, and that was enough to know I should never, ever have easy access to benzos, because I loved it. The bad thing that had happened was still bad, and I could tell you “oh, that was a bad thing that happened,” but I had this emotional distance from it, like it was arm’s length from me, and I felt really nice and peaceful.
The one time I tried to take it to sleep was useless, though.
noo, I just can’t accept that!! I’ve been in that giddy ‘I have no filter’ state of tiredness myself, and if I thought it was that much fun to be un-anxious all the time… well, dammit, that’s just not fair.
That feeling drunk – yes! I’ve done the going back to work on a sleepless night thing, and that’s exactly how it feels.
Interesting. I don’t mean to brag or be obnoxious, but I’m not an anxious person at all, to the extent that a number of people have assumed I am on drugs, or a huge stoner or such. When I recently came back to work shortly after a 16-hour flight from a place with a 12-hour time difference (i did get in around 11 pm and slept some before work), I felt like I had ADD, or symptoms very similar to someone close to me who has it. Very distractable, and I kept interrupting people, in addition to the drunken kind of loopiness that happens. It was even kind of fun until the time of inevitable crash into sleep.
SAME. I have GAD and I had severe food poisoning earlier this year and was in bed for a week, thus reducing my sphere of “things I care and worry about” to my immediate self. It was very instructive.
Uh so maybe this is why I actually love sick days when I’m miserable and can’t get out of bed, crap, whoops.
I almost got in a car accident yesterday because I have worked 18 days straight, and I realized they aren’t kidding when they tell you that driving tired is like driving drunk. Yowza!
Yes!! Glad you’re ok–my father in law had a catastrophic accident last year because of tiredness (he fully crossed a median line and did a header into a truck) and I’ve been really paranoid about it ever since.
I had this horrible realization in grad school, that the secret of life is being too tired to be afraid. (I imagine other, less stimulant-averse people could substitute a lot of other things for “tired.”) I wouldn’t say this is *good* life advice, but sometimes it’s like muscle confusion: the only way to get something done is trick your train into some kind of deprivation model.
The more tired I constantly am the better my GPA, which is actually completely horrific but honestly I needed the grade boost, so. There’s that.
I also find that tiredness can dull my anxiety, but there is a very narrow space between “tired enough to not worry” and “too tired to function”, so I’ve never been able to reliably use it as a coping strategy.
For me at least there’s this bizarre window of, like, too exhausted for anxiety + running on caffeine and adrenaline that = peak performance. It’s not a good thing.
Yeah…it gets things done sometimes, but it’s not a great way to operate. I end up really exhausted and unfocused afterwards.
This is how I live.
I had this realization my senior year of college, and it was both great (I could function! Nothing mattered!) and soul-crushing (endless loopy fatigue).
Lack of sleep makes me queasy. I got not nearly enough sleep before an overnight work shift. It’s 5am and I have an hour and change to go and I’m so tired. And queasy.
This is totally random, but “Geraldine” is one of my favorite “used to be common older person names,” right up there with “Hazel” and “Edwina.”
I’m actually working with a Geraldine! She goes by Gerry, which makes sense as Geraldine is a lot to say, but you’re right, it’s a lovely name.
I know an an older couple named Gerald and Geraldine. He goes by Jerry.
My grandparents are Gerry and Jeanne, which is confounding to poor interlopers like my husband who had to spend a while memorizing which was the G and which was the J.
Gerry/Jerry? Jean(ne)/Gene?
Yes! My grandma is named Geraldine and went by Grandma Jerry, which is fucking adorable imo.
I love the name Hazel. Maybe from all those years reading Girls with Slingshots.
I named my baby Hazel! I want to pretend the idea came out of nowhere, but I’m pretty sure the name was hiding out in my brain from that comic.
I have a friend with a baby Hazel! Maybe it’s you! (Probably not) But I love that name.
I love it too, but always think of it first and foremost as a name for a rabbit, thanks to Watership Down.
Me too. Also when I see a bunny in the yard I address it as either “Fiver” or “Hazel.”
My Reagan dating great-grandma was a Geraldine. I mean, it’s no Daphne, but Gerry’s ok.
Your great-grandmother dated Reagan? Details please!
..as in she dated Ronald Reagan?
I think it’s like carbon-dating. You test how much Reagan is in someone to see how old they are.
In high school our history teacher asked us on the first day if we were Carter or Reagan models.
…in this case, it’s possibly more Reagan than anybody wants to think about?
Yep. It was when they were both in radio together. After he became governor they apparently kept up a nice little correspondence.
Was it WHO? That’s my hometown station, and I always thought it was bizarre that Reagan worked for them.
That’s it. She was a singer, he was an announcer and she definitely tapped that. Ended up marrying a big band trumpeter though and not a future president, but still wound up in California same as Ronnie.
My two grandmas are Geraldine and Daphne!
A friend of my family’s were Philomena and Archangula
All these years later and long after it matters even a little I finally have my goth name- Archangula.
Edit to add: I’m worried my comment comes off as unkind- I seriously read that name and I felt it in my heart like “Yes, that’s us. We should be an Archangula.”
My cousin just named her baby girl Geraldine! I think they plan on nicknaming her Deena but I like Gerry too!
I have a grandma Gladys and great-grandmothers named Blanche and Elva, all of which are really solid old lady names. I’m also a fan of Loretta and Opal.
There’s something marvelously aspirational about looking at a precious newborn and sticking her with a solid old lady name like a protective amulet for her longevity and grandoffspring.
I had a Gladys grandma, too! My other was Rosalie, which I think is a good one, also my great-aunts Zelda and Thelma
I love Rosalie! My grandmothers were Ida and Rose.
Like from The Music Man song!
My Grandma was named Viola (the flower, not the instrument). It’s a beautiful name.
GLADYS.
🙂
Those are delightful! I had a Grandma Marian and a Grandma Henrietta; GreatGrandmas Marjorie and Matilda.
My mother-in-law’s name is Geraldine (named after her uncle Gerald). We aren’t very close, so I have a more visceral reaction to it. She goes by Gerri, however.
I’m already planning old lady names for our future children, but my husband is not so into it. Unfortunately, they also seem to be making a comeback, given the number of small Evelyns (my grandmother’s name) I’ve met recently. I’m still holding out Myrtle (my other grandmother’s middle name) does not take off
There is such a big resurgence of old-lady names. I know babies named Edith and Hazel!
There was a Hazel in my pre-K class and she was the sweetest kid. When I left to work in a library she gave me a marble as a gift, and her mom said she spent about 30 minutes digging through a barrel of hand-crafted marbles to find the perfect one.
My baby is Miriam, so we’re certainly in keeping with that trend.
“There is such a big resurgence of old-lady names. ”
I was wondering if that was always ongoing, since names like Sarah, Emily and Emma were old names that made a resurgence. That ended up not really being true for Sarah or Emily, but Emma, yes: http://nameberry.com/babyname/Emma/popularity
Definitely the case for Hazel: http://nameberry.com/babyname/Hazel/popularity
Boy, Geraldine has tanked, but I wonder if we’ll see a spike now: http://nameberry.com/babyname/Geraldine/popularit…
OK, now I’m going to spend the rest of my day entering names. Evelyn’s making a comeback, but not for boys. That died in the 30s. I was surprised at how popular Myrtle was back in the day: http://nameberry.com/babyname/Myrtle/popularity
I had a grandmother Evelyn too! Evelyn on my dad’s side, Dorothy on my mom’s.
My maternal grandmother was Evelyn Margaret (Her dad’s favorite niece was named Marguerite and apparently he had a brain fart filling out my Oma’s birth certificate and wrote down Marguerite instead of Margaret, so her official documentation was wrong, but whatever.) My mum is Margaret (not named after her cousin), and she absolutely hates it.
My paternal grandmother is Mary Anna “Molly” Myrtle
After watching Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries, I’m kind of obsessed with Dorothy/Dotty, but our family has a fraught relationship with nicknames
My great-grandma and her sisters were Evelyn, Marguerite, and Lilian. (Although they actually had much more boring, acceptably-Catholic names on their birth certificates).
The three of them were apparently notorious party girls in northern NJ in the ’20s. We still have a flapper dress of my great-grandma’s that’s quite sheer and has very intricate beadwork. I think she had a pretty good time back then!
I need a novel about her and her sisters. Please get on it, in your abundant spare time after The Toast is no longer with us.
Oo my sister’s name is Evelyn and my grandma’s name was Dorothy! Solid choices all around.
I gave my daughter a kinda “old lady name” in that she was named for my grandma Iva. It suits her. I am a big fan of Hazel, Geraldine, and Edwina. I also love Winifred.
Love old lady names on babies! I hope Betty makes a comeback.
I’m still occasionally bummed that my husband vetoed Evangeline. But we did go with Lydia, which shows up in centenarian obituaries more than birth announcements these days.
I’d keep her away from the militia, tho…
And Brighton.
*high five* I have a Lydia too! And a Genevieve, another fairly old-fashioned name. We seriously considered Hazel, but it didn’t sound as good with her last name.
Mine is named Lydia Geneva!!!
lol great minds think (mostly) alike!
I have oodles of Calvins and Graces and Jesses in my family (because dour calvinists), but also a Zenobia. I wish I had met her, because she sounds awesome.)
I wanted to put this in the LR yesterday but the original article was behind a paywall. There is a cheese glut right now so it is our duty as Americans to eat more cheese. About 3 lbs. a year per person to be exact.
Ann Althouse did a post about it so I’ll share that today. http://althouse.blogspot.com/2016/05/america-cant…
I regret I only have one appetite to give for my country.
Eat More Cheese America
Make America Cheese Again
Oh don’t worry, my toddler is taking care of it. She about eats her body weight in cheese each month.
Your Canadian neighbours would be happy to help but our DRACONIAN dairy import laws prevent us.
*grumbles and spends way too much on shitty cheese*
Wait. I eat WAYYYYYY more than 3lb of cheese per year.
Sorry, I was not clear. We need to eat 3 lbs more than we eat now. The average American eats 36 lbs. a year while the average person in France eats 57 lbs.
I remember 37 lbs a year from Pop Up Video like 15 years ago. Useless trivia for the win!
Patriotic duty to eat more cheese?
I serve at the pleasure of the President.
“Andrew Jackson, in the main foyer of his White House, had a big block of cheese.”
I regret that I have only one stomach to fill with cheese.
But does it specify what kinds of cheese are in excess?
MY BODY IS READY
I’m pretty sure I could eat an extra 3 pounds of cheese per *week*, so 52 of my fellow Americans are off the hook.
Yeah, I’ll help pick up the slack for non-cheese-eating people.
I’d be interested to see more specific about the data with that sleep study. How large were the sample sizes? What tests did you do? What the heck does “bad performance” even mean? Give me metrics!
Give me data or GTFO.
Exactly!
Yeah, it definitely matches what I think is true of myself, but that’s not data, it’s confirmation bias.
I have a lot of questions as well! Plus, I’m just doubtful–equating no sleep with insufficient sleep seems… bold. The last time I stayed up for three days in a row, I was hallucinating by the end of it and had the motor skills of a toddler. It was rather upsetting, but not exactly surprising. I regularly sleep 6-7 hours a night, and I’m pretty sure everything I see is actually here and my body is doing what my brain is telling it to do… I’d call this massively improved performance over no sleep.
Apologies for piling more side-eye on this article, but this person dug up some study from 2003. Like, what is the consensus of the field on this? It’s been 13 years–has anyone gotten around to replicating, supporting, or refuting this study? Why did you dig this up now and report it like it was hot news?
Also, the “nobody will tell you this gem of medical wisdom based on this one context-less study, but lose weight, unproductive fatties” at the end of this article is getting yet more side-eye from me.
ETA: I really am sorry about being hard on this link–but I have really strong feelings about suspect science reporting and about fat-shaming, both….
The one sleep study I keep thinking about over the years was the one about sleep deficit. Basically that you’re still tired from sleep you didn’t get two weeks ago, and it took the test group two weeks of 12 hours of mandatory bed rest a night before they started waking up refreshed without an alarm. But the thing I also remember was that not everyone settled into 8 hours a night, some slept 9, some 6, some 7 etc. The amount of sleep each person needed varied.
So yeah, while I believe that I am absolutely operating at a lower level of efficiency because I’m constantly tired, I also personally know it’s nothing like when I was seriously sleep deprived on a survival course. When trees start talking to me on my way to work, then I’ll put more stock in this study lol.
WTA: whoop, meant to reply this to your first comment.
Honestly I’ve mostly stopped reading any kind of health study type article because they almost always end with “also lose weight, fatties” and I just cannot anymore.
Is there some kind of contract where they are required to say this?
“Sure, this article about the effect of doodads on whatzit-uptake efficiency is very important and interesting, but unless you remind everyone that fat people are ruining everything, I just can’t publish it.”
Ok, here’s the link to the abstract of the original study at PubMed: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12683469
The study cohort was n=48, with subjects assigned to randomized groups restricted to 8h (n=9), 6h (n=13), 4h (n=13), and 0h (n=13). The basic point they were trying to prove was whether humans could adapt to chronic sleep restriction, i.e. you have some rough days at first but then settle into a new norm of 4 or 6 hours per night. (The complete sleep restriction group was to establish a baseline of what *that* scenario looks like, to compare changes in cognitive function.)
The study tested responsiveness through a battery of basic memory and cognition tasks (matching numbers to symbols, and then having to remember which number went with which symbol; basic serial arithmetic and subtraction tests) and psychomotor attentiveness tests (basically, you have to pay attention to something and respond to it), and asked participants to rate their subjective sleepiness according to two different scales (the results coincided really nicely across both scales, apparently). The sleepiness assessment was one of the things the FC writer really ran with (…), which is that the cognitive decline was actually a lot higher with the 4h group versus the 6h group, but they reported really similar subjective assessments of their “sleepiness.”
The main takeaways from the study were: 1) no, humans don’t adapt to chronic sleep restriction; 2) the neurobehavioral deficit builds up when you’re not getting “enough” sleep–it just takes longer if you’re still getting 4h/night, but you’re still going to get to the uncanny valley of NEED SLEEP eventually.
The study authors also acknowledge that there’s a lot of inter-individual variation in how much sleep people need, and correspondingly how much “excessive wakefulness” is going to get you into the trouble zone. The original study was conducted at Penn Med, and the authors have all done many other studies on neurological, behavioral, metabolic, endocrinological, and cardiac implications of sleep restriction and deprivation in the intervening 13 years. (Can’t tell if there have been other confirmation studies here though–sorry.)
I don’t think the FC article conclusion of “getting insufficient sleep is JUST AS BAD as getting no sleep at all” is justified, but also, getting 4h of sleep each night for a long period of time is not going to lead to great outcomes. (And there’s absolutely nothing in this article about sleep and weight, and that line at the end of the FC article is totally unhelpful, and deserves all the side-eye.)
Signed, no one is coming to the reference desk today because it’s university reunions, so I can answer these questions all day for the Toast, ask me anything!
This is great! Thank you.
See, this is much more reasonable than the headline and treatment it is given–as is usually the case. I am relieved on behalf of Science, and thanks to your A-plus slow-day reference desking for it!
But this means there’s all the more side-eye to be given to that article’s author and publisher, though. Also, as is usually the case.
You are awesome.
We appreciate you.
Why is science journalism so terrible. I know that the science itself can be horrible, but science journalism is so fucking sensationalist.
This is excellent, thank you. I agree that their business of “6 hours is just as bad as no hours” is extremely overdone. Like, clearly that isn’t the case over the course of 2 days. Yes, it’s important to know that the effects do add up and we aren’t just going to adjust, but seriously, 6 hours is definitely better than no hours in the short-term and in the long-term (considering there basically is no long-term to be had with no sleep).
Oh my god, 2003 was 13 years ago…
I KNOW, RIGHT?
That “lose weight, fatties” bit at the end really bothered me too.
I went three days without sleep and went to see an orchestra play a Johnny Greenwood symphony and I hallucinated both the instruments playing themselves and a motorcycle on the stage.
Much more interesting than my hallucinations. I kept thinking the furniture was moving and that someone was talking to me when no one was there. BORING.
I came down to the comments to say exactly this. I’m a chronic insomniac and have experienced the full range of sleep, from a full night to ‘none at all, perhaps for days’. Six hours may not be ideal but it’s okay and I function just fine. With no sleep I become irritable, distracted, even paranoid. It’s not even comparable.
And I also hallucinated after three days with no sleep. I wonder if that’s the point at which people do that?
During grad school final-paper phase, I would get 2 hours of sleep every now and then (like, when I couldn’t keep my eyes open at all), and by the end of the week, I couldn’t walk in a straight line, plus I kept hearing things. Then I had a cup of coffee, and genuinely thought I was dying.
I am filing it under “mildly interesting but useless,” since it amounts to “IF YOU’RE NOT GETTING ENOUGH SLEEP YOU ARE DOOOOOMED but also you can’t accurately gauge how much sleep you’re getting or how tired you are, so enjoy fruitlessly worrying about it, that oughta help you sleep.”
yeah. nothing better than GET ENOUGH MOAR EXTRA SLEEP OR YOU WILL DIE TERRIBLY POSSIBLY TOMORROW to help with the ol shut-eye…
Myth busters said that resting or dozing is still restful and helpful, even if you’re not sleeping, which helps me to de-stress about not sleeping when I’m laying in bed unable to sleep. 😛
Agreed! Plus the people were limited to 6 hours EVERY night, they didn’t test whether getting additional hours every few days (like on weekends or etc) would have changed the outcome. While there are surely some people who only sleep 6 hours every night, there are a lot more who sleep 6 hours sometimes but frequently get more.
Yeah, plus their suggestions to get more sleep basically amount to individual solutions to systemic problems. Like, how many of us aren’t getting enough sleep just because we don’t have a proper bedtime routine? Employers requiring longer work hours affects our ability to get home chores done, which pushes back downtime, which pushes back bedtime. Employers wanting access to workers at all hours of the day keeps people on electronic devices at night. Maybe if people weren’t being asked to work more than 40 hours a week, plus spend all available time directly entertaining kids, plus potentially work other jobs to stay afloat, this wouldn’t be such a problem.
Yeah, I was pretty creeped out by the focus on “performance”. Like, that’s the only reason we should worry about sleeping enough, so we can be productive little capitalists? Are we at THAT phase of our dystopian future already, and if so where is my jetpack?
They just mean performance on the neurobehavioral assessments. I think its just a reflection of the researchers’ desire to use standardized assays. Most researchers I know aren’t good little capitalists 😛
They link to the study in the article!
Here’s a free copy online: http://www.med.upenn.edu/uep/assets/user-content/…
So…
Toast colony on Mars, y/n?
I mean, I’m all for this, but could we apply for husband permits? Mine is really pretty to look at, good at carrying heavy stuff, and is never surly.
Babayaga Toast colony on Mars!
Today in (Feminist) History! [Archive]
(I feel like I should apologize for how long today’s is, whoops.)
On this day in 1861 was the bith of Victoria Earle Matthews (nee Ella Victoria Smith), an American author and essayist known for her work in the settlement movement, and especially for civil rights issues. Victoria (then Ella) was born into slavery in Georgia, as the daughter of a slave and her master. Shortly after her birth, Victoria’s mother ran away to New York, leaving her daughters behind as she worked to earn enough money to purchase freedom for herself and her daughters. She did in fact return, and was the first black woman to be recognized in Georgia’s court system.
After being emancipated, Victoria moved with her family to New York. She attended public school until leaving to work as a domestic servant to support her family. In between working, she read books in the library of the home she worked in; the owner caught her, but gave her permission to read whenever she had time, which allowed her to self-educate herself. Though she married at 18, Victoria began writing as a journalist and a fiction writer. Much of her work involved her political interests, especially regarding the issues that black people faced at the time. She wrote about the African-American struggle, the idea of Post-Civil War reconciliation, and also about miscegenation– something that particularly struck home for her, as someone with very noticeable European ancestry. She also became the first president of the Woman’s Loyal Union of New York (a black woman’s club and a civil rights organization) and co-founded the National Federation of Afro-American Women (which later merged with the National Colored Women’s League to become the National Association of Colored Women.)
Victoria’s appearance– she had fair skin and a very European appearance– allowed her to gain preferential treatment in a society still prejudiced against people with darker skin. However, she used that to help others who didn’t have the same advantage. She became involved in settlement work, which was a social movement aimed towards getting the mingling of the rich and the poor, but especially towards providing services like education, daycare, and healthcare to the poor in urban areas, to help alleviate their poverty. At first, Victoria worked by visiting people and families, going house to house providing services like helping a mother do laundry, or prepare a meal. In her experience visiting these households one by one, she learned of the lives they lead, and their difficulties with poverty, bad housing, limited economic opportunities, etc.
Victoria was especially concerned with the plight of young black girls, who were arriving in the North in large numbers to find work and better life opportunities than they could get in the Jim Crow south, and being lured into prostitution. After touring the South to investigate organizations and red-light districts that were victimizing young black girls, Victoria created the White Rose Industrial Association, a training facility where black girls could come to learn domestic work. She also wanted to make education a part of what she offered, and began teaching them reading, writing, and math, as well as literature and race history. In time, wanting to do more Victoria and her supporters (including a number of other black women and ministers) bought a home that they named the White Rose Mission (or the White Rose Home for Colored Working Girls). Volunteers would meet migrants at the train station and offer them safe housing, making sure they didn’t fall into the hands of traffickers and others who might try to trap them into something more dangerous. They were given a place to live, and at the Mission they would also be educated, trained in practical skills, and encouraged by Victoria to be self-sufficient. The White Rose Home not only gave them the chance for future work, but a safe place to live, where they could always be around their teachers and thus learning when they could, as well as allowing them a place to enjoy socializing at cultural and literary events.
Victoria died in 1907; she had no living children, as her only son died at the age of 15. But she left a legacy behind, including that of an organization named after her: The Victoria Earle Matthews (Mothers) Club, an all-black organization that worked to aid young black women and girls who had been abused or threatened with sexual abuse.
What is your after-Toast plan for continuing to share this wonderful and amazing information (assuming you plan to continue, which, please do?)
It is in flux tbh, but I definitely plan to continue! I feel like the most obvious choice would be to just post them directly to my WordPress blog (which is currently the archive)? I tweet those automatically, and then I can also post the link in the Toastie Slack, etc.
But I’ve considered making it into a Tiny Letter, too, I really should get on that.
Wow, this one is so amazing. I love learning about these women I never heard of before. I hope to be able to follow this series after July 1st!
Oh my god this woman was clearly an amazing person. Thank you for sharing this!!
She sounds amazing! And her mother sounds interesting, too – escaping slavery and having to leave one’s children behind, and then purchasing their freedom, must require a lot of courage.
I’ll mention this on Twitter and in Toast Points as well, but as of today The Toast freelance calendar is full through July 1st. Still waiting on some stuff to come in — assuming I do get all the pieces from everyone as promised, there is no more room!
As an aside: Mallory has done a wonderful job filling the 9am link roundup spot this week! Every day I have moved the post from 10am to 9am, as she’s just so used to having her first post be at 10!
So she has done a wonderful job at filling the 9am post *with some professional help without which in fact nothing would have been posted at nine*. Thanks Nikki for taking care of us!
New Toast motto, adapted from the Redesdale family motto: “Nikki Careth For Us”.
oh my God I am so sorry
I TRIED SO HARD
NO YOU WERE GREAT, YOU ARE THE GREATEST
Truly horrifying story, but A+ muckraking from the Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/28/nyregion/bodies…?
ohhhhhhhhhhhhh my god
That’s just disgraceful.
It’s not even like, the obvious things here that are horrifying. It’s the level of deception you would need to pull this thing off. Basically, any institution with sufficient power and money can get up to all sorts of shit without anyone having ANY IDEA. Ahhh.
Oh God, this sleep deprivation article is explaining SO MUCH of my twenties and also confirming that this new routine I have of going to bed around 10 and waking up around 7 is actually the best choice ever.
after my baby was born, i looked back upon my 20s (and late teens also) with the deepest, saddest regret – all those hours i could have been asleep, and yet wasn’t!
sleeping enough is the best. i wish i’d done more of it while i still could.
I slept for nine hours last night and I feel AMAZING.
I just read an article about Boris Johnson and David Cameron and have now come to the conclusion that while Cameron may not be the World’s Greatest Person/Politician he definitely is the nicer and more likeable person of the two of them.
Is Boris Johnson, I wonder, a Conservative ploy engineered to make Cameron seem more reasonable? (See also: George Osbourne.)
George Osborne is just Satan. I was having some very nice curtains made last year and the bloke in the shop (who I know quite well) suggested a very very lovely fabric sample. I sent it back to him as it was from Osborne and Little (George’s dad’s firm, whose attitude to profit/tax is quite amusing), telling him I couldn’t put a penny into the private pocket of the Chancellor. Bloke was quite impressed.
No one will ever be able to convince me that Osborne isn’t a lizard in a skinsuit.
I am convinced there is more to him than meets the eye. he can’t possibly have become mayor while being such a buffoon as he seems, surely? It must be a cover story? (NB: if Trump wins I will recant this statement as he is clearly just a buffoon.)
Boris is really like Trump. There was a very revealing BBC profile of him a year or two ago in which his sister (a mainstream journalist of the Torygraph persuasion) said that Boris just wanted to win at absolutely every game or contest or anything. She recalls him shouting “I WANT TO BE KING OF EVERYTHING!” and really meaning it.
UGH.
How very alarming.
Speaking of his sister, I was reading a feature of hers in the Times last week (we get it at work, and I am surprised on a daily basis not just how conservative it is, and how narrow a group its perceived readers are – there was a thing in their property section once asking if people would pay an extra half a million pounds to buy a house near a good school. Not a half-million house; an expensive house PLUS £500,000. What – but also how poorly written it is) and she was, unsurprisingly, awful. It was about women wearing high heels in the workplace, and she described them as “a bit hookerish. A bit John Whittingdale’s plus-one”. Great, let’s use sex workers as a punchline! What responsible, thoughtful journalism.
She is ghastly. And classic “only writing for national newspapers because of who my Daddy is”.
The Times is a crypto-fascist rag.
I know that by now you probably have enough pitches to keep the Toast going until the end (I had to pause and grit my teeth before writing those dread words) but if not, I would like to make it known that I would pay good money for “If Daveed Digs Were Your Boyfriend.”
There are so many of these ongoing features that I wish I could continue on clevermanka.net. I’m trying to see their loss as a lesson on the transient nature of life. Like one of those sand mandalas.
I have found myself thinking recently about how great it must be to be a Buddhist. Attachment is clearly a fool’s game; everything ends! What am I doing getting attached to things?
I have a BA in religious studies and my main focus was Buddhism. It’s such a variable religion, there really can be something in it for everyone. So many variants to seeing the world, all housed under the umbrella of Buddhism.
I’m big on non-attachment, too, which is why the Burgomaster’s hoarding tendencies can make me come unglued every once in a while.
Unfortunately for me, I quite like being attached to things. It just brings so much misery when they inevitably end. Stupid fundamental fact of life.
Perhaps people could post their “Toast fanfiction” or r/ToastCrumbs, but that would just be to no more than entertaining a small, special audience.
Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
DAVEEEEEEEEEED
I haven’t had two consecutive weeks of good sleep in over three years.
A+ subtle gif use. Also: oof.
The main thing that keeps me from giving up is the idea that if I ever get to be a normal-sleep and -energy person again, I’m gonna be unstoppable.
Sleeplessness is the forge in which gods and monsters are made. Or something.
As a parent of a newborn, I assume this is my fate as well!
I haven’t had a full night’s sleep since I was about 5 months pregnant, and my wee one is 2. But sure hubby, let’s have another kid lol. 😛
Half of why we have one and done, right there.
I can’t remember the last time I had two whole consecutive weeks of good sleep. I just…how is that even possible?
And yet HERE WE ARE
I think I’m in a similar boat, but my memory is too short (thanks sleep deprivation!) to remember how often I sleep well. 🙁
Not to be all, “I would never be one of *those* sleep-deprived persons,” but I would never be one of those sleep-deprived persons. Only not for the reason you think. I would never be one of those sleep deprived persons because two days with 6 hours of sleep is enough to make me crumple. Whatever sort of mechanism makes “mildly” sleep-deprived people feel not sleepy…I’m missing it.
Oh trust me, we’re not walking around not feeling sleepy. I’m tired all the damn time. I had to take six weeks of FMLA this year on top of my six weeks post-surgery (bye-bye, accrued vacation!) because fatigue issues were affecting my work performance and physical health. Good times, good times.
If I’m running at under 7 hours of sleep at night, I actually fall asleep at my desk, so I’m right there with you. My body will MAKE me sleep, whether I like it or not.
Yup this is me too. I’m a night person who has to wake up at 6 am for work, I am always tired and will nod of at my desk sometimes when my body just decides it’s time to shut down.
I agree… now, I don’t have children, and I am certain it would be different if I did, but as it is, no matter what is on my plate, when I hit that wall, I’m going to sleep come hell or high water. It doesn’t matter what deadlines I miss or what work doesn’t get done or what exercise I don’t get. I’m fucking sleeping.
I have never pulled an all-nighter. Ever. Even in college or grad school. At some point, my body says “that’s enough,” and I go to sleep, even if just for a couple of hours.
Oh, except I just remembered the time I was in ICU and actually couldn’t sleep for 2.5 days due to various sickness- and hospital-related factors — I ended up with hallucinations and the doctor actually prescribed sleep.
I haven’t either. I can’t decide if it’s because I am a nerd who manages my time well, or because I just love sleep too much to sacrifice.
I think the closest I got to an all-nighter was when I was travelling from Sydney, Australia to Philadelphia, USA and spent approximately 36 hours awake because I seriously cannot sleep sitting up.
I couldn’t stay up that long voluntarily, though.
I have never intentionally pulled an all-nighter. There was one hellish travel period in which I spent 8 hours waiting in one airport, 8 hours flying with no sleep because I can’t really sleep on planes, and then 25 hours in another airport waiting and too paranoid about my possessions to really nap, but I’m pretty sure I was nodding off for micro-naps every few minutes by the end of that.
I probably could do it if I had to, but my performance in anything that required thought would suffer way too much for it to be worth it.
I start throwing up if I don’t get enough sleep. Which is kind of exciting!
D:
I often feel very nauseous if I wake up substantially earlier than I’m used to.
Same here. Or if I get very little sleep in general, even if I wake up at the same time.
MY PEOPLE. She posts, from 5:26 on an overnight shift after too little sleep, feeling super queasy and wanting to go home and pass out, for the love of god, less than an hour now until I clock out, hurrah
Oh, I’m hella tired. I just also have a bunch of kids (two are crap sleepers) and I work after they go to bed. I haven’t slept in six years and I look exactly like someone who hasn’t slept normally in six years. I hit the wall of “must sleep now” and sort of have to move through it to the other side of panic-awake-can’t sleep mode.
Neither could I. When I don’t have enough sleep for long periods of time, like three days, I get a massive headache.
I read a news story about the Appalachian Trail hiker yesterday and was so horrified. She was still alive for weeks after the search was called off! She was so close to the trail! (Reading A Walk in the Woods and The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon have both left me with a strong desire never to venture into the Maine woods; getting lost sounds so easy.)
I mean also Pennywise lives in the Maine woods, and who wants to wake up to creepy balloon lights and laughing? No one, that’s who.
My urge to talk a long walk will one day be satisfied by the Camino (pilgrimage in Spain with plenty of people, food, emergency services, etc.)
A friend of mine’s best friend from school did the Camino, and I will just say (to not be That Guy) that the trip is not without its dangers. Of course, life isn’t, so you should go ahead and do it despite what a stranger like me has to say about it on a website! 😀
Please go on! Details? I like to be prepared and know my risks. (I’m years away from being able to afford the $/time to do the hike… ample time to change my mine!)
http://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/southwe…
There are pop-ups galore on that site, sorry. You’ll obviously be able to see the subject at hand from the URL…. I will say that the friend of mine is a friend I only interact with on FB, so really all I know about the story is all of the news stuff she linked to on FB when Denise was missing, then later when they found out more.
HELLO I AM DEBBIE DOWNER TODAY
The Appalachian Trail hiker story is tragic, but I’m also awed that there are still places in this country where you can really, truly be lost. With a cell phone, even! With K9 units and helicopters! Sometimes I forget that world is still a big and scary and powerful place.
Especially in New England! We’re so used to having all these little town and ‘burbs packed so closely, but really nature is just outside the door.
I watched the Blair Witch Project as a kid and came away totally unimpressed by witches, but terrified of getting lost in the woods.
It is weird what things can make me feel old. I usually never feel old. But somehow, today, “I watched the Blair Witch Project as a kid” made me feel old. 🙂
Not nearly the same level of danger, but I find people lost all the time on some trails I regularly hike/run on. It is wooded, but not densely, and if you go to the north, you hit a railroad track and then a Very Big River; if you go south you hit an Interstate highway; if you go east you hit *the governor of the state’s mansion*; if you go west you hit a state highway. There isn’t any cell service until you get close to the governor’s mansion or the Interstate. The trails are busy enough that most people find someone to lead them out before dark, but there are a lot of people who go hiking and get lost, even when it seems like the trail is easy and obvious.
Again, there’s no real danger, so it’s mostly funny. One couple I found I had to hike them back to my vehicle, then drive them to their vehicle, because they were several miles farther on the trails than they thought, and were not comfortable about trying to find their way back to the side they entered on. Their dog thought it was the Best Adventure Ever–
Personally, the only times I’ve been in trouble on a trail is when I did something stupid. Ask me about getting stuck in a bog in Ontario–
So about getting stuck in a bog in Ontario….?
Yes, please do go on about the bog in Ontario!
It was October and the provincial park was technically closed for the winter (as far as I could tell–the parking lot gate was shut and padlocked.) So stupid number one, going on a trail in the first place, when there was really no chance that anyone would come along the trail if I had any trouble. Stupid number two, no one really knew where I was to begin with other than ‘I’m going on a 6 week trip from Kansas to Ontario and back and am going to try to hit all the Great Lakes’.
Stupid number three: going off trail in a place I’d never been before with only minimal knowledge of the area. So, I went off trail to look closer at something, honestly, now (it was over 15 years ago) I don’t remember what. As I went down (the trail was raised, hmm, maybe there was a reason–) the slope it seemed fine, until, of course, it wasn’t. The mud/peat/whatever sucked me down and then I saw pitcher plants and I’m all, ‘oh. This ‘meadow’ is a bog.’ At that point it was too late. It is true, the more you try to get out, the more you sink in. I tried some of the ‘disperse your weight and try to ‘float’. Nope.
It was October. Warmish in the daytime, but very cold at night. And I was now fairly soaked with water. So, I had to get out before dark or I was going to have, at best, hypothermia overnight. Because I was lucky, there was a dead pine tree that had fallen into the bog–juuuuuust out of reach. I was able to ‘wishy-washer’ myself close enough to grab onto it (moving like I was an agitator in a top-loading washing machine, ha!) Once I had the tree to brace against, I was able to ‘dig’ myself out of the bog and get back up to the trail via the tree trunk with its very useful dead branch handles.
It was a rather cold hike back to the truck, ha! And I was very lucky, or I would have been some news item about foolish people out hiking. I do not always follow the rules even now, though, so it is possible I will still someday be a news item. I still hike alone, and I don’t always tell people *exactly* where I’m going, and I still sometimes take risks that turn out badly, though, so far, no serious injuries or the like. It’s a discussion I’ve had with many, many people, and I’m still going hiking. By myself. Because if I wait for people to do things with, I won’t wind up doing anything!
Whew, I’m glad you came out of that safely!
Maybe it’s because I’m Canadian and 99% of the novels we read in HS were wilderness survival tales, but I’m morbidly fascinated by these sorts of stories.
If you want to read a really interesting/depressing tale, google “Death Valley Germans”. It’s great but harrowing as hell. There are no explicit descriptions of what happened to the Germans (spoilers: they don’t make it) but there’s enough implication of what their last days were like that it’s extremely upsetting if you think about it for too long.
There was also a case of a Dutch man & German woman who died in Joshua Tree several years ago. It seems they were not well informed about the realities of the desert – they tried to take a rental car into an off-road-vehicles-only area, did not have much water with them on a day the temps were in triple digits, etc. Since reading about that case I’ve decided I will never ever try to drive through the desert (even staying on main roads), much less visit it as a destination, without bringing several gallons of water along.
I think that story was in a link roundup long ago, and it is an absolutely thrilling detective story. Maps, extreme remoteness, behavioral analysis, multi-coordinated SAR efforts.
I live in the PNW and regularly hike on BLM or Forest Service lands where there is nothing–no cell service, no people, nothing but you and the trail (and your dogs, of course). It’s not hard to get lost, even with a compass and a map and years and years of experience.
I’m so excited about Nikki’s book! Congratulations!!!!
THANK YOU <3
You’re welcome! I’m kind of amazed how proprietary I feel about everyone at The Toast – I feel as excited and proud as I was when my brother got published (but don’t tell him that).
I would never.
The Atlantic did an interview with a 22-year-old Trump supporter, and I just….
“Maybe this comes from being in the white group, but I never saw Trump as race-baiting.”
MAYBE.
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/…
“Even if I trend slightly more authoritarian than average, I don’t want to live in a dictatorship.”
That writer needs to be a little more clear instead of calling both Clintons “Clinton.”
The Clintonmass demands another term in office; it is strong, viable, unlike the Bush.
Maybe THAT Bush isn’t strong and viable, but MY bush certainly is.
Also: I had too many feelings and had to stop reading this.
I took breaks.
I can’t even start it. I need to take a Xanax just from reading the comments about it here.
oh to live in a world where the most pressing problem you wish society could resolve was ‘political correctness’
I am one paragraph in and he’s referenced his “Asian fiancee.” Hmmm.
That’s when I noped the fuck out.
I just don’t even know what this dude (or anyone who uses that term this way) even means by “political correctness.” Is it just stuff he doesn’t agree with? He thinks he has some right to go around expressing opinions and not be challenged? Everyone should just be in perfect agreement with him all the time?
Also, I don’t know how he thinks the president can “overrule university speech policies.” 😮
I love how his example of political correctness is that other WWE fans disagree with him vis-a-vis Hulk Hogan. But then he goes on to say that people have called him a neo-nazi?
In a word: Yes.
I feel like the creepy thing is that so many people DO seem to believe Trump is saying what “everyone” secretly believes, and the rest of us are just too dishonest/cowardly/brainwashed/whatever to admit it.
(And celebrity type people who keep insisting that in person/in private Trump is very nice and reasonable. Those are not static platonic qualities! It does not make me feel better to think that maybe he doesn’t believe all those horrible things, but is perfectly willing to pretend to do so to get votes/attention! Those are not the acts of a nice, reasonable, decent person!)
ps I gave myself a bit of a media-about-the-election break so it was just yesterday I was reading about the Julia Ioffe stuff. HOLY SHIT. I guess saying that people shouldn’t paste the heads of Jewish reporters on pictures of Auschwitz victims would be “politically correct”???
WHAT? I’ve been in end-of-term grading fog and I had not heard about the Julia Ioffe stuff, and now I’m afraid to go look because I probably don’t need the extra stress, and your summary is enough to let me know that looking would be Very Bad for my blood pressure. WTF.
“Maybe this comes from being in the white group, but I never saw Trump as race-baiting.”
Yeah, maybe it’s being in the white group. Or maybe you’re an idiot? Possibly a little of column A, little of column B? They’re not mutually exclusive, kid.
The “white group”
group
is it just me or is this so bizarre and so revealing
It’s his team in the summer camp color wars, maybe.
I see the world becoming less and less tolerant of right-leaning views.
As evidenced…where?
instituting laws preventing social media posts from costing people jobs
That’s extremely big government there, friend.
In fact, for my fiancee, it took her a long time to come over to Trump, in part due to fearing that his ideology was more rooted in a sort of “America for Whites” (that and her fear of Trump being rooted in an “America for Men”).
Are you sure she’s genuinely in support of Donald Trump, and isn’t just agreeing to get you to stop hectoring her?
Killing terrorist family members has been something I’ve wondered about for a long time. While the idea seems horrible initially, sometimes when you have these attacks, you wonder what can we do to stop them?
Commit war crimes, obviously. This is clearly the solution.
And then I had to stop reading.
Y’all…this year’s spelling bee was LIT. Two desi kids winning again! One of them was Telugu, which was cool. All of them kept dabbing for some reason which was absolutely delightful.
And, ohmygod, Nihar is savage, I felt a liitle bad for Jairam but I also want to adopt Nihar? He did the Dez! They nicknamed him Nihar “The Machine”! He kept trolling Jairam!
I missed it! Okay, when are they rerunning it so I can watch every delightful moment?
I saw a few Vines and GIFs on twitter last night and cackled at that kid.
The spelling bee was extremely entertaining to watch, and a little funny because one of the ESPN color commentators was trying to force sports analogies into everything and clearly didn’t know what to say about spelling.
Also, kinda love that they changed the rules to prevent tying and there was a tie for the third consecutive year after something like 50 years of no ties. These kids are pretty awesome.
Be with me Toasts. I posted something about how I find Sanders’ narrative & diagnosis about income inequality lacking in its prescription for the wage gap of POC & women. Obviously, a Berniebro (long time Socialist Dude, bit of Dawkinsite, ultimately does want to engage with new ideas) sent me a long private message reply (at least he didn’t post it on my wall this time like I asked!), explaining why the DNC and RNC are basically the same. I’m diving in.
Do you need help with links or pithy responses? You’ve come to the right place! (I cannot provide these things, only be a virtual cheering section.)
Go. Fight! WIN! And call me when you get back, I’ve enjoyed our talk.
-Edna Mode
bless you. be well.
Did you know that if we just put intersectionality and identity politicis aside, we’d stop offending the delicate sensibilities of “working people” so we could unite against the real problem of oligarchies and the revolution could take hold? (I say plutocracy, but whatever)
To be fair, he did concede that intersectional economics has been Bernie’s “blindspot” and said that Sanders had been better about it lately.
My stump question that worked, though: Would, by the principals Sanders has extolled about his voting record, he have voted for the 15th amendment, even though it excluded women and was therefore “incremental progress” lacking the sweeping and necessary change?
Toasties, I would like to inform you that seven new species of PEACOCK SPIDERS(!) have been discovered by a Sydney scientist and it’s all kinds of wow. Fair warning, this link contains amazing gifs of colourful, dancing peacock spiders: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-05-27/sydney-scie…
that is a truly adorable spider discovery!
What a nifty discovery. Australia! Where, from an outsider’s perspective, all animals are either creepy as hell* or really cute and fascinating**!
*koalas
**these spiders***
***I am given to understand there is some disagreement as to which animals go where in this dichotomy, but I think my interpretation is self-evident
“The man who made the discovery, Jurgen Otto, said he believed even the most extreme arachnophobes would be enchanted by the beauty of the creatures, which are just a few millimetres in length.”
Hmmmm…. we’ll see about that, Mr. Otto. We’ll see.
lol yeah this extreme arachnophobe is not clicking the link to test that assertion.
Peacock spiders are the only spiders I will voluntarily look at* because I love their colors and their fuzzies.
*Except in situations where “uh-oh what the hell is that THING in my house/boat/car and does it want to kill me?” are pressing questions.
I wish all spiders were like that, in both size and colourways.
At only a few millimetres in size, Dr Otto said he believed there are now 48 confirmed species of spider within the Maratus genus.
What an achievement for such a tiny scientist!
IKR?!
AAAAAAAH you are perfect, my dear freshwaterpearl.
Bahahaaha you’re awesome.
oh gosh, I really don’t like spiders but these ones are ADORABLE, 100% glad I clicked.
I can feel my body reacting to OMG SPIDERS but they also kind of… adorable? idk I’m really confused now
These would all make great reaction gifs except I’d feel bad for arachnophobes posting them.
Dr Otto published his new discoveries with co-author David Hill in the jumping spider journal Peckhamia.
JUMPING SPIDER JOURNAL that is all
(except that’s not all because these tiny dancers are all kinds of enchanting!!! The color! The shimmy! The smol!)
The original news report I saw this in had Uptown Funk in the background, synced with the spiders’ movements and it was EVEN BETTER!
*heart eyes* Peacock spiders are the best! Also now I really want one of those ridiculous BBC voiceover things for these gifs of them (‘Steve! Steve!’).
I LOVE those BBC voiceover things with every fiber of my being.
“Arachnophobes Love Them!” oh my god 😀
– I have mixed feelings about that Appalachian Trail story. On the one hand, yes, awful. On the other, it makes the AT seem less crowded than I’d heard it was.
– I love the cover of The Split-Level Game. “Reckless suburbanites play it for kicks! First, the wife gives in to a neighbor. Second, the husband hides out with a pretty secretary. Third, [CENSORED]” What happened third? Dr. Kildare cosplay? A frank and enlightening discussion of kink? Something with the butt? What?
– I really do need to get more sleep. I wish i could say that it was necessity that was keeping me up, but it’s really a renewed interest in Diablo III.
I was also confused by that because I thought the AT was crowded enough that if you were to scream for a while each day for a few days someone would eventually hear you from the trail. Guess not?
I’m trying not to say anything that sounds cruel towards the woman in question, but it sounds like she generally just may have done a lot of things that aren’t particularly optimal to being found? Trying to find cell reception rather than trying to find her way back to the trail, staying put in one spot the entire time (this initially sounded weird to me, because I thought you were supposed to stay put when lost? but I think that’s you should stop WHEN you realize you’re lost so you don’t wander further away, and if you’re lost for about a month, it probably makes sense to move around after a certain point), etc.
Yes. It’s tragic, but anyone who wants to be out in the woods should be analyzing these sorts of things (as the backcountry ski community does with avalanche incidents and rock climbers and mountaineers do with theirs). There were a lot of things she could have done differently. Thinking about why she made the decisions she did and identifying how not-bad-on-the-surface choices cascaded to her eventual death seems cold, but is, at least in my opinion, kinder than either solely blaming or solely mourning her.
I took a wilderness survival skills course when we first moved out here, because while I was really into the idea of hiking I was also nervous about the emptiness of the western US wilderness (I’m originally from the Great Lakes area). One of the most useful things the instructor taught us was to write out an outline of what to do if you got lost, and then laminate it or put it into a ziplock bag (for waterproofing purposes) and to always have it when hiking, even if just on a short day hike. He said that your brain is completely incapable of operating rationally when you’re in panic mode, and having a plan that you’ve written out beforehand, when you’re able to think clearly, can be the difference between surviving and not. And he also encouraged everyone to take incidents like this poor woman and analyze them, and to update the written plan based on details that came up that you hadn’t thought about when you first wrote the plan out.
I don’t think it’s cruel for a serious hiker to look at this woman’s case (or any other similar case) and to think about her choices and why she made them and what other options were available that might have made a difference. I never though about it a ton before moving out here, but now that I’ve been in the PNW for a decade, it’s more immediate. People go missing in the woods around here all the time. Sometimes they turn up alive, sometimes their bodies are found, sometimes they vanish without a trace. People die on particular mountains in the area every year. As an outdoorsy-type person, it would be irresponsible, I think, not to try to figure out what happened. Acknowledging that a person was unprepared (or underprepared) for the conditions in which she found herself in order to better prepare yourself or other people for similar adventures is not the same as victim-blaming, IMO.
tl;dr: Wilderness hiking is an inherently risky activity. That risk can be lessened if we look at incidents where things went horribly wrong and analyze why they went wrong. This does not mean the victim made unreasonable or wrong choices in the moment.
Yep, I have mine on waterproof paper in a zippered pants pocket. I go over and make a new set for any big trip or trip in a new area.
I was hedging my words a bit for the audience here. It’s a learned reaction for me to read a story like this and start thinking, “Why did she” this, “Why didn’t she” that, and, “What would I do?” but I didn’t want to come off as callous if that’s not how most folks on a given forum are primed to think.
It’s true, if you don’t hike (or backcountry ski, or whatever) a lot you probably don’t give this kind of thing much/any thought–I certainly never did when the extent of my hiking was on trails in state parks where you really and truly couldn’t get lost.
Maine is definitely about as desolate as it gets, AT-wise, and it sounds like she was off near Sugarloaf which is pretty remote, but there’s still a lot less space to get lost in than say anywhere west of the Mississippi so yeah idk
The story about that poor woman on the Appalachian Trail reminded me of the most terrifying episode of Thinking Sideways ever.
I loved that suburbia article. It’s so interesting to get a picture of how people living though a certain time period viewed their situation (versus the stereotype of the time that we have). Almost like historical anthropology.
That being said, I liked the line about the so-called deviant beatniks who arrived to the neighborhood wearing *gasp* turtlenecks!
Completely OT, but I really love your username! (is it a circle of magic reference? Because Daja is awesome! If not, cool name anyway and hope you have a lovely day)
It is! Daja’s awesome, pretty much anything Tamora Pierce does is awesome too 🙂
That sleep story pretty much sums up why I left my last well-paid job. It is no way to live.
I feel the frustration of that suburbia article writer, having devoted many delightful words to the fun pulp-novel stuff and then having to sum up the “but is it still true today?” in three oversimplified paragraphs at the end. You could (okay, and Curbed has) write several whole articles about the facts and figures in those three paragraphs.
It’s fascinating to me what people think of when they think of the word “suburb” now: something built in the 1950s-60s at the edge of a city, probably on a rail line? Or something built in 2000 20 miles from the city limits, off a freeway exit? The article kinda muddles up the two at the end there.
I read a lot about urban planning, and it always bugs me how vague the terms are. I don’t think there’s any official consensus on what constitutes a city, suburb, or town. Is it population? Density? Relation to other population centers? Fun exercise– ask people how small a town needs to be to make it a “small town.”
Ok, here’s the link to the abstract of the original study at PubMed: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12683469
The study cohort was n=48, with subjects assigned to randomized groups restricted to 8h (n=9), 6h (n=13), 4h (n=13), and 0h (n=13). The basic point they were trying to prove was whether humans could adapt to chronic sleep restriction, i.e. you have some rough days at first but then settle into a new norm of 4 or 6 hours per night. (The complete sleep restriction group was to establish a baseline of what *that* scenario looks like, to compare changes in cognitive function.)
The study tested responsiveness through a battery of basic memory and cognition tasks (matching numbers to symbols, and then having to remember which number went with which symbol; basic serial arithmetic and subtraction tests) and psychomotor attentiveness tests (basically, you have to pay attention to something and respond to it), and asked participants to rate their subjective sleepiness according to two different scales (the results coincided really nicely across both scales, apparently). The sleepiness assessment was one of the things the FC writer really ran with (…), which is that the cognitive decline was actually a lot higher with the 4h group versus the 6h group, but they reported really similar subjective assessments of their “sleepiness.”
The main takeaways from the study were: 1) no, humans don’t adapt to chronic sleep restriction; 2) the neurobehavioral deficit builds up when you’re not getting “enough” sleep–it just takes longer if you’re still getting 4h/night, but you’re still going to get to the uncanny valley of NEED SLEEP eventually.
The study authors also acknowledge that there’s a lot of inter-individual variation in how much sleep people need, and correspondingly how much “excessive wakefulness” is going to get you into the trouble zone. The original study was conducted at Penn Med, and the authors have all done many other studies on neurological, behavioral, metabolic, endocrinological, and cardiac implications of sleep restriction and deprivation in the intervening 13 years. (Can’t tell if there have been other confirmation studies here though–sorry.)
I don’t think the FC article conclusion of “getting insufficient sleep is JUST AS BAD as getting no sleep at all” is justified, but also, getting 4h of sleep each night for a long period of time is not going to lead to great outcomes. (And there’s absolutely nothing in this article about sleep and weight, and that line at the end of the FC article is totally unhelpful, and deserves all the side-eye.)
Signed, no one is coming to the reference desk today because it’s university reunions, so I can answer these questions all day for the Toast, ask me anything!
ETA: this was originally a response to Either_Ada, but I’m going to move this into the main thread actually, because I am SO HERE for close reading journal articles and giving pop science reportage serious side-eye.
OMG. The NYTimes “Well” health section makes my head spin like the exorcist. The article about “Making all your drastic changes at once” was just the stupidest interpretation (completely made up) I’ve ever seen.
Yes! Like, hello, I can’t pull an all nighter. I’ve tried that exactly twice, and both times, they resulted in me falling asleep in situations where I really shouldn’t–like in the middle of a test while drawing a diagram of a heart, or at a book store. And if I get no or just 2-3 hours of sleep, my talking is basically gibberish, and my ability to walk in a straight line is severely impaired. Whereas if I get 6 hours of sleep, I’m bleary and very slow, but able to converse in an understandable manner, and am able to function about the same as if I had a really bad cold.
You are doing a good service! John Oliver salutes you.
She did it: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/may/20/moun…
That 22 yo Donald Trump support is everything wrong with San Francisco/Tech Areas. PC is such a bullshit term. They’re angry that they have to think outside their little bubble. I’m sorry you have to be an adult and interact with people that are different than you, and do it in a civil manner. Stop being so goddamn self centered.
I’m sick of every health study saying lose weight, get more sleep, don’t drink alcohol…if you’d just drink 8 glasses of water a day blah blah blah. If drinking 8 glasses of water a day could only deliver on its promises…
My magic combo is, Say No Alot More, Drink Nice Wine, Breathe In and Out, Look at Sky and Say Thank You, Put More Cream in Dark Roast Coffee.
Mmmm what a beautiful combo. I want to write it out and put it next to my desk as a reminder.
wild applause to “saying no a lot more.” I’m not always great about doing that, but when I do I find I suddenly get a lot more sleep…
Actually that 8 glasses of water a day thing isn’t true at all.
It’s totally true if you count coffee as water.
Eight fruit and veg a day?–chocolate is a bean.
We’re all good here.
Yeah, it stems from 19th c. theories about hydrotherapy as a curative iirc. So it is basically like 19th c. recs to take rest by the seaside etc. Oh, I just realized this is a day old and nobody will see it. Oh well, already written.
Unfortunately, the Conversation gets it just as wrong as the Telegraph did about African American novelists. They list Hannah Crafts, Sarah Farro, William Wells Brown, Harriet E. Wilson, and Frank J. Webb as the only ones who published in the 19th century. They forgot Frances Harper, who’s novel Iola Leroy (1892) was for a long time considered the earliest published novel by an African American woman; Martin R Delany’s Blake or the Huts of America (it wasn’t published as a complete novel until 1970, but was serialized in full in magazines between 1859-1862); and Sutton E. Griggs’ Imperium in Imperio (1899).
I’m not even going to read the sleep dep article. They’ve got me on 7-3s most of the next three weeks and I worked them the last 3 weeks with several clopen shifts. But I did get back on Cymbalta and I actually feel on the ball enough to almost not care that I don’t have enough sleep.
I… almost wish I was like this? I'm almost always anxious to some degree, but it is much, much worse if I'm sleep deprived (which is most of the time because I'm a student).
When I flew back from India 10 days ago, I got maybe 7 hours of sleep over 2 1/2 days. I landed in Boston and called my husband, and I was basically drunk – slurring words, forgetting vocabulary, getting distracted in the middle of sentences. Good think I wasn’t driving home from the airport.
When I flew back from India 10 days ago, I got maybe 7 hours of sleep over 2 1/2 days. I landed in Boston and called my husband, and I was basically drunk – slurring words, forgetting vocabulary, getting distracted in the middle of sentences. Good think I wasn't driving home from the airport.
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