FLASHBACK TO WHEN SHE COULD FIT EVEN A LITTLE BIT IN HER CHAIR. Now she just lies next to it and sulks.
Jo Cox’s assassination is a nightmarish tragedy:
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said the country would be “in shock at the horrific murder”, describing the MP as a “much loved colleague”.
He added: “Jo died doing her public duty at the heart of our democracy, listening to and representing the people she was elected to serve.
“In the coming days, there will be questions to answer about how and why she died.
“But for now all our thoughts are with Jo’s husband Brendan and their two young children. They will grow up without their mum, but can be immensely proud of what she did, what she achieved and what she stood for.”
Julie Rodgers is great, and one of my favourite queer Christians who talks about homophobia in the church:
It’s no surprise, then, that subtle disdain for L.G.B.T. people would eventually be expressed more overtly. In the case of the shooting at Pulse in Orlando, it was devastating. The Christians I know were grieved by the massacre and they want to know how to help. The best thing they can do is repent for the ways they’ve helped create a culture that devalues L.G.B.T. people made in the image of God, and then begin to tell a better story about us in their circles.
Nikki’s dad is sick, and I would very much appreciate your prayers and Good Vibes and expressions of love and care for her at this time.
My boyfriend of about 5years is a big gamer. I’m not. The last video game I played was probably Oregon Trail or something in grade school. He’s always talking about how he wishes that I played video games so that he can “feel more connected to me”. His ex was a “gamer girl”, and he loved that about her.
Last night I had some free time so I decided to create an account and send him a request to play with me. I made my username a pretty specific inside joke between the two of us and sent him a flirty message (with another inside joke) asking him if he wanted to play. He didn’t flirt back or anything, which struck me as kind of weird, but whatever. He’s usually kind of a straight-to-the-point kind of guy over text/email, so it kind of made sense. He agreed to play as my “teammate” (if that’s what you would call it).
Seeing as I’ve never really played a video game before, I was naturally pretty bad. We have a very lighthearted, jokey relationship, so I’d send him little funny “whoops, I fucked up” messages when I’d do something wrong. He didn’t respond for the first few. At this point, I still think he knows it’s me, so I figure he’s just concentrating.
Then things took a weird turn. He started getting really, really verbally abusive. Saying horrible, largely misogynistic things to me. Calling me specific names that he has told me on several occasions that he would never use because they “sicken him”. He even told me that he wished someone would “put me in my place” in explicitly violent terms.
It was freaking weird. I’m 100% convinced he didn’t realize it was me, despite all of the obvious hints, so I know he wasn’t intending to direct those insults at his girlfriend. But the nature of our inside joke that I used for my username made it kind of clear that I was a girl.
I just can’t shake the fact that he would say these things to other human beings. He has specifically commented on how immature and stupid “keyboard warriors” are and how he’d never do that to another person. Many times. And he has always, always spoken out against violence toward women.
CAITY WEAVER PROFILES KIM KARDASHIAN:
Zadie Smith on Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah:
‘There’s an essay of Rachel’s about comedian Dave Chappelle that I love called If He Hollers Let Him Go, a sublime title borrowed from Chester Himes’ novel. It’s a good example of her technique: even if her subject is a superstar, she approaches them as a human being, with a great attention to the detail of their local and historical context. Her writing on black culture has a vertical depth; she writes about the history of African Americans in the US, but it’s never dry or academic as there’s so much love in it. She loves the people, the details, the landscape, the language. Her non-fiction reads like a rich fiction. It’s uncommon to read a voice that mixes anger and joy so beautifully and with so much skill. She doesn’t write rants, she writes eloquent, appreciative tirades. If she thinks Kendrick Lamar is a genius she will go to any rhetorical length to convince you of the same. The energy in her writing comes from a place of aesthetic delight.
‘We hardly see each other but I email her, especially with any relevant news of Beyoncé, and I’m so delighted by her when I see her. She’s always full of enthusiasm for a weird song, a weird book, a weird piece of art; she has eclectic and enlivening tastes. She was the first person I spoke to about the hip-hop group Odd Future. I thought I was pretty fly for knowing about them, but she’d already interviewed them. I’m lucky to know someone as cool as Rachel, even vaguely. She brings news.
This is ringing bells of I EXPECT FREE EMOTIONAL LABOR all over the place, please listen to the cues you are getting:
Dear Prudence,
I am in the process of ending my 20-year marriage. For the last year, I have been talking to a former co-worker online who went through a similar process a year ago. Our conversations are platonic, about relationships and how I’m feeling, and are a source of support for me. My friend has a habit of saying “I’ll talk to you after lunch” and then not communicating for a day or so. When she does come back online, no mention is made of her final comment. I find it disingenuous not to make note of the fact that she didn’t follow through, and I have told her so. I have also explained that I don’t expect her to be available or to keep her word to the letter, but that it speaks to a lack of concern to skip over a dangling promise. I recently told her that I could not continue to talk under these circumstances. I am struggling with self-esteem issues and need support and validation to help me through my transition. It kills me to not talk to her, but I am tired of ruminating over this perceived slight. Am I being oversensitive?
—Silence Is the Best Medicine
EAT IT, HATERS, I NEVER BOUGHT YOUR LIES:
In reviewing the scientific evidence over the past 25 years since its last analysis on the matter, the WHO concluded that coffee should no longer be considered a carcinogen and that it may actually have positive effects for your body when it comes to two types of cancers — those of the liver and uterus.
Now before you start ordering that second steaming cup, it’s important to know that the WHO report wasn’t all good news. There was another significant finding: “Very hot” beverages “probably” cause cancer. This is mostly based on studies related to the consumption of a traditional drink called mate or cimarrón in South America, where the tea can be taken at temperatures around 158 degrees Fahrenheit (or 70 degrees Celsius). That’s significantly hotter than people in North America or Europe usually consume their drinks.
“Everything causes cancer.” “No wait, it prevents cancer!” “No, wait, it does cause cancer, just in a different way from before.” Next up: LIFE: IT MAKES YOU SICK.
Living makes you die!!
*searches for the what if oxygen is poisonous and only takes 75-100 years to kill us tumblr post*
The whole “air is great–let’s breathe it!” thing is totally an agenda being pushed by Big Oxygen.
Heh, it was on my dash this morning! http://somethingwittythiswaycomes.tumblr.com/post…
Thank you! Tumblr is blocked at work and I was having trouble finding it on my phone.
I’ve seen some science fiction that deals with this very premise; the idea is that the anaerobic life forms are still alive in the chthonic depths of the earth and have some quasi-Lovecraftian plot to regain the earth from the oxygen-breathers. There’s also this thing, which reads less like a story and more like someone’s woo-woo rant in lightly fictionalized form.
I think about that post a /lot/, I have no way of knowing if any of the science is like, actually real but it certainly stuck in my head.
Right? I can’t tell if it’s legit (or if so, to what degree), but the idea haunts me.
It’s like certain creepypastas especially the more sciency ones, there’s a voice in your head saying “okay that /can’t/ have actually happened” but there’s enough plausibility written into it that it COULD’VE
Seriously, there comes a point where you really just have to accept that bodies decay as they go through natural processes like “ingesting things from outside the body” and just accept the inevitability of death.
But like, maybe in a less killjoy kinda way than that, y’know.
OREGON TRAIL!! No learning aid was ever more helpful in realizing how tough it was moving west. I was always getting dysentery and my stupid kids were always falling off wagons and breaking their arms. I would have been the first to turn around and high-tail it back to Boston.
And why do oxen keep dying as you cross the river?!
Because they lack gumption.
Reminds me of the greatest gift I’ve ever given:
Oh my gosh this is amazing, would read the longform narrative piece on the experience of getting this
If only they were giving out girl scout badges upon arrival in the West!
But if you would like to get one of your own, you can do so here. (I have the witchcraft one sitting on my desk right now, which might be of interest to the Too Witches crowd!)
Did anybody else play the later 90s CD-ROM version of Oregon Trail? I loved it so much and tried to find an online version of it a few years ago and was very sad that I couldn’t. The hunting was so much more enjoyable than the blinking white dot bullets of the original.
Oh and also on the subject of old educational computer games, I feel like I may have brought this up before but I know that there was a game we played in the computer lab in elementary school in which you were a slave trying to escape to freedom and I can’t for the life of me find evidence of its existence. I feel like it was called Freedom Trail or something like that. Somebody please tell me that this isn’t just some kind of bizarre fever dream and that it was a real thing!
I have heard people speak of it before, so you are not fever dreaming! (Being Canadian, we didn’t have a fixation on the slave trade, so I did not play it. But I DID play Oregon Trail, because everyone did.)
Phew! Perhaps appropriately, I remember it being a really difficult game. I don’t think I ever made it to freedom! I made it close enough once that I know that “freedom” was represented by a literal line in the grass that you had to cross like you were going for a touchdown. Very true to life, I’m sure!
I think I had this, but I don’t remember it so well. I do have vivid memories of Amazon Trail, which involved spear fishing!
Amazon Trail was GREAT and also felt impossible to beat??? I don’t think I ever got to the end, even though I completed the Oregon Trail and the Yukon Trail many times as a kid.
Yes, it was really hard! I think I got to the end like once.
I loved Amazon Trail! There was exactly one Ecuadorian city there and I always tried to reach it, but got distracted trying to take pictures of the pretty birds and/or catching malaria. (For reference: Vilcabamba is where all the hippies go to retire.)
Amazon Trail was my favorite! I don’t think any experience of my adult life could capture the satisfaction of seeing a morpho butterfly or spearing that really big type of river fish.
Also, the matter of fact way that the guide announced “you have died.” always cracked me up.
“I’ll put it in your photo album!”
“You seem to be feeling a lot better now!”
I feel like that guide’s voice is still my inner voice sometimes…
Oh god I can hear her voice exactly as I read this
This was the first game where I realized that you could apply strategy in early gameplay that would affect the outcome later. Specifically in reference to making sure that your gift from the storyteller (shaman?) was ipecacuanha that you could feed to the unhinged conquistador to free the little worker and get a shield symbol.
OH MY GOD I AM SO ANGRY ABOUT THIS
i was even thinking about this like last week – i never figured that out and I always failed that level!!!!! raaaage!!!!!
Yes! My favorite parts were the rafting, and gambling all my party’s money away playing cards!
That’s the version my kids consistently let me die in.
“MOM has malaria. Wait in town? Seek a doctor? Forage? Ford the river? Increase speed?”
“Cross the river and go faster!”
“MOM has died.”
https://archive.org/details/msdos_Oregon_Trail_De…
Is it this one? You can play in your browser… if you remember your DOS prompts, which i can’t right now.
I can’t click at work but I am so looking forward to checking this tonight!!
I think this one might be too early….if you’re also looking for the 1995 Oregon Trail II.
Oregon Trail II! The best of the Oregon Trails (Oregons Trail?). My sister and I had to share a computer, so we were constantly offering ‘assistance’ to one another whenever a calamity struck on the trail, in order to make it our turn faster.
“No, I really think if you have a snakebite, the best thing to do is just keep going, you don’t know how poisonous the snake was…you might be fine!”
I am 90% sure I played it once and saw a buffalo stampede?? Or maybe I just dreamt that.
I played the SHIT out of that game. It had a journal feature that I was probably the only person to ever use. I wrote a whole story in there, printed it out, and drew me a cover with colored pencils. It was a harrowing story.
That one was the best! Where it started out with all the green-screened actors talking about pioneer days? And if you started in the 1840s, you could talk to members of the Donner Party before they went cannibal. Finding a DOS of that is my white whale.
We had the CD-ROM version in our elementary school computer labs! No other video game has ever lived up to my memories of early 00’s Oregon Trail.
Whatever you do, don’t stop in the midwest! It’s f-ing humid and hotter than hell in the summer, and in winter it snows and it’s so cold the air hurts your face.
Why do I live in a place where the air hurts my face? 🙁
Did anyone else ever play Yukon Trail? It was made by the same people as Oregon Trail, but at the end you got to mine and pan for gold in Alaska! You also get to go into Canada! For some reason my dad had a copy of it and I have probably played it more than I have Oregon Trail.
Yes! I don’t think I played it as much as the Oregon or Amazon trails but I definitely remember panning for gold.
There are also Mounties in it!
Yukon Trail was my faaaavorite; I played that and Amazon Trail all the time as a kid. I tried to see if it would work in my laptop a couple years back, and while it did not work, it did allow me to download the soundtrack to my iTunes, so now I can listen to it and reminisce if I want to!
Yes. It came bundled free with my family Compaq (now with CD-ROM!). I was really good at the target shooting gallery in Skagway.
Yes! I was the lucky recipient of a combo pack of Oregon Trail, Yukon Trail, and Amazon Trail when I was 10 and I loved them all. All of the different technology for panning for gold! My sister and I had a long-running inside joke/catchphrase of how the shopkeeper in the beginning says, “It’s a biiiig saw!”
The Internet Archive recently posted versions of a ton of old games that you can play in your browser. They’ve got both the original Oregon Trail and the 1992 CD-ROM version. It is both a highly interesting test of how copyright law and the behavior of copyright holders interact in the world of “abandoned” software and a chance to accidentally kill your office mates somewhere in Wyoming instead of getting any work done.
Click my name for the original version!
Did anyone else play that game where you’re trying to land a module on the moon, and you have to steer it down (and release at the right time) with PRECISE AIM because if you’re even a little bit off, all the astronauts die.
last time i played, i put all politicians from this year’s GOP field in as the names. it was frustrating and yet strangely satisfying when MARCO HAS BROKEN A LEG or JEB HAS DIED OF DYSENTERY. just like in the real world, they could. not. stop. hurting themselves.
My mom bought me my /very own Oregon Trail game/ for Christmas when I was 11 and it was maybe the best christmas gift I ever got
I had a 7th grade “technology” class, where all we did was PLAY OREGON TRAIL FOR AN ENTIRE YEAR. (Not that I’m complaining).
We mostly played a variation that we called “Suicide Oregon Trail”, where you start off with no provisions and see how fast you can kill off everyone in your party.
The version of Oregon Trail my school had was contained on two floppy disks. Somewhere in the middle of Colorado the first disk stopped, and you had to put in the second disk to finish and get to Oregon. At some point the second disk was lost or damaged. After that we tried to kill ourselves before the first disk ended. No provisions, only buying one ox, fording rivers that were 12 feet deep…
I only ever played Oregon Trail while living on the American military base in Iceland. Little did I know that five years later I would live in Oregon.
Today in (Feminist) History! [Archive
On this day in 1858 was the death of Lakshmibai, the Rani of Jhansi, a queen of the Jhansi State in India, and one of the leading figures in the Indian Rebellion of 1857. Born in November of 1828, she was named Manikarnika and nicknamed Manu. Educated at home and raised to be independent, she was also trained in horsemanship, fencing, and shooting. In May of 1842, she was married to Raja Gangadhar, the Maharaja of Jhansi, after which she was called Lakshmibai in honor of Lakshmi, the Hindu Goddess. In 1851, Lakshmibai gave birth to a son, but he died at only four months of age. She and her husband adopted a child (the son of her husband’s cousin), but the next day the Maharaja died, and despite a letter he wrote stating that his wife Lakshmibai should have the government of Jhansi for her lifetime, his wishes were not obeyed. With their son adopted and not theirs by birth, the British East India Company applied the “Doctrine of Lapse”, rejected their claim to the throne, and annexed the state. That following Marsh, Lakshmibai was given money and an annual pension, and ordered to leave the fort and the palace. Nothing Lakshmibai did could accomplish the reversal of the annexation, and frustration and anger was rising as the Doctrine had been used to take over eight different states between 1848-1856.
On May 10, 1857, the Indian Rebellion began in Meerut. Hearing word, Lakshmibai asked for permission to create a small force of soldiers to protect herself. In June of 1857, men of the 12th Bengal Native Infantry seized the fort, convinced the British to lay down their arms, and then broke their promise of safety and killed them all, along with their wives and children. Still unsure whether to support the rebellion, Lakshmibai was pressured and threatened into giving money to the soldiers. After, with no government left in the city, she took over the administration with permission of the British Government. Over the next few months she and her soldiers protecting the town and kept it safe; first from a rival for her throne and then from attacks from neighboring towns. Through her time in control, she continued to reach out to the British for assistance, only to receive no response, and no help.
In order to protect herself and Jhansi, she had reduced her fortune and most of her options without help, and she was also privy to the reports from towns that had been taken back under British control, where anyone suspected of being a rebel was executed, and the towns were then looted. In January of 1858, a British force began to march on Jhansi, and Lakshmibai had to expect the worst– and also prepare for it. When the troops arrived in March, they offered her the chance to surrender. Knowing her people would be executed if she did, Lakshmibai refused and began to lead her people to fight back and defend their fort. Throughout the siege she was seen on the walls along with her soldiers, and on April 3rd when the British finally entered the fort (with orders to kill all men over the age of sixteen), she was right in the middle of the fight, too.
Eventually, knowing her capture was inevitable, Lakshmibai took her son and escaped– one legend claims that she strapped her son to her back and leaped her horse over the cliff; the horse died, but she escaped and traveled 100 miles to Kali, where she met other rebels and was forced to continue retreating. This time they fled to Gwalior, an ‘impregnable’ fort held by a pro-British Maharaja. Around 11,000 rebels, including Lakshmibai, advanced on the fort; after only a few shots, Maharaja Sindia’s army defected and he fled; a new Maharaja named Rao Sahib was crowned and Lakshmibai was given a pearl necklace for her part in the fight.
They then faced the British in battle on June 17th, where Lakshmibai was given command of the eastern flank of the rebel force. It was in this battle that Lakshmibai died. There are numerous stories of her death, though the general basics are somewhat the same, and usually involve Lakshmibai dressed as a sowar (a cavalry soldier). Lakshmibai was on horseback when the British cavalry appeared by surprise, causing her soldiers to scatter. She didn’t flee, but instead attacked and was unhorsed and possibly wounded by a sabre. On the ground, bleeding at the side of the road, she looked up and saw the man that had unhorsed her, raised her pistol and fired. But she missed, and the soldier killed her with his carbine; since she was dressed as a soldier, he didn’t even realize who he had killed. Her tomb is located in Gwalior. Statues of her (usually on horseback with her son at her back) can be found in numerous locations in India, and she has a University and a National Park named after her. In addition, a women’s unit in the Indian National Army was named the Rani of Jhansi Regiment.
Two decades after her death, Colonol Malleson of the British army wrote in his History of the Indian Mutiny: “Whatever her faults in British eyes may have been, her countrymen will ever remember that she was driven by ill-treatment into rebellion, and that she lived and died for her country.”
Thank you! I could have sworn I had read about her on Rejected Princesses, but the map there ( http://www.rejectedprincesses.com/map ) says not!
This story is SO GOOD.
Doesn’t Sansa realize that if she just stopped growing, she wouldn’t have to sulk about not fitting in the chair? Easy solution, win/win.
Here is a lovely little article and I will leave it to you to guess what my husband had to point out to me!
May I also be taken in by 32-year old Royal Navy helicopter pilot Nick Grimmer? Handsome British man, in uniform, with a cat, is checking all of my boxes.
Cannot guess, too distracted by aggressively handsome man and irrepressibly adorable kitten.
Oh my goodness it can only go to sleep in his helmet I’m squealing.
Oh noooo it’s eventually gonna grow too big for the helmet and I bet that (being a cat) it’ll still insist on using it so it’ll just shove its head in and leave the rest of its fluffy body hanging out.
Oh my god. I thought I wasn’t going to find him handsome at all but HELLO, or rather MEEE-OW!
I clicked on the link from my phone when you were talking about it on Slack, but then I had to click again from my desktop.
*nods sagely*
Oooooooooh is he eye-making-love to the camera or what! *Swooooon swoon-ity swoon swoon”
But what was it your husband had to point out? That they named the kitty Tigger and they are “The flying tigers”?
He literally had to point out the v pretty pilot. I did not see/notice him due to fluffy kitten with spot on nose.
Aaah, that is some GOOD cat lady-ing right there! Yes, little Tigger is unbelievably adorable.
When kittens are that young, all I think of is “Where is the mother?? He’s too small!”. It’s mostly when people have baby cats as pets though, I hate it when they take kittens from their mama to soon, because they’re “so small and cuuuuteeee!”
And how will he earn a living?
<3 <3 <3 The post with little Sir Whatley Ho-ington will always remain among my favorite Toast posts, if not THE favorite.
Did you see this? https://www.instagram.com/jeevesoldsport/ Turned out it was lady Ho-ington! Her name is Jeeves and her nose is still the Best Cat Nose Ever.
Oh man, reality Rule 63’d Sir Whatley Ho-ington!
This is the best and I want it to be made into a calendar.
They wouldn’t have to change the picture a bit! Perfect lighting and all.
Also: GINGER BEARDDDD
I know right?! I should just carefully place it over my existing calendar every month like my grandma did when my dad was in a sexy firefighter calendar
Well that article went right to my ovaries, thanks.
The answer is always “Break up with him/her”.
He is showing you what he is really like. Pay attention.
And he will be 50% of the input on your children.
Pretty much! Golden rule of advice columns: If you are writing to an advice column about your partner instead of talking to your partner, you should probably DTMFA.
Except that dude who just wrote Pruallory about his gf what doesn’t wear frills, he should do some soul-searching and then lie at her feet, begging for forgiveness because he considered breaking up with a goddess over her clothing style.
Oh God, yes.
“She doesn’t perform her gender enough for me! But is perfect in every other way. How do I make her do a bunch of extra work in her life just because I want her to?”
Dude. No.
Perfect opportunity for the Flying Toasts to airdrop some new hair ties and bon bons to this admirably self-possessed fellow traveler, joining in the lingerie-never-gonna-happen laughter while praising Mallory to the skies.
*ed. note: I am willing to learn to pilot in order to establish the Flying Toasts. After my sincere appreciation of kitten-toting Flying Tiger, rawr.
FLYING TOASTS. YES.
Rawr, indeed!
I don’t even like beards and I just said DAAAAAAMN out loud in my open office.
Look out, ridiculously handsome lieutenant, Background Tiger is trying to sink his teeth into little Tigger!
Good point, good point.
Yes but she should break up with him to find someone worthy of her, so the rule is good.
It’s even worse when you check her comments because she details exactly what he said, and it is BAD NEWS, Y’ALL.
Yup, I was afraid that’s what she meant when she said “put me in my place”, and it was just as nauseating as I feared. He holds the same sentiments about women that war criminals and domestic abusers do. Dump his ass ASAP. There is no making up for that.
I searched for her username in the comments and I didn’t find them, but I’m sure they were terrible.
If you click her name at the top of her post, you can see all her comments.
It’s exactly what you think it is, when you read “he hoped somebody ‘put me in my place’ in explicitly violent terms.” It’s exactly as predictable and terrible as that.
Well, that was a horrifying thing to read first thing in the morning. She should 100% dump him. (I didn’t read far enough to see, but she is 100% sure it was her BF she was interacting with, right? Maybe make sure, then dump?)
He has always spoken out against violence against women in public, where people could hear him, and about men who are not him.
There’s something about the deaths of both Christina Grimmie and Jo Cox* in the past couple of weeks, deaths that occurred thousands of miles apart to two very different women for two very different reasons (probably, we don’t yet know in Cox’s case), that bring up all my fears and worries about being in public while female. I’m not really sure how to put the rest of my thoughts into words, but I feel uneasy and upset.
*and the stabbing of Mayu Tomita, though she fortunately seems to have made a full recovery.
Would it be how toxic masculinity is, and how many examples we have this week? Becaude I’m feeling that. What do all these mass shooters and stalkers and killers of publicly visible women have in common? Most of them are dudes. so many angry dudes just…itching to get attention by killing someone else. Instead of blaming all the causes they subscribe to, line them up and you see piles and piles of men in the teen to 30s range.
The thought I have flitting around in my head (without the statistics to back it up) is that the gender ratio of ‘public officials attacked by angry men’ seems to be much more heavily female than the gender ratio of ‘public officials, period’.
It just seems like every time some angry, violent man gets angry about he government, he always finds a FEMALE official to blame.
Fuck everything, TGIF, soon I can go smite virtual people with lightning bolts in an MMO with my sister.
I was recently looking at a Wikipedia page which includes a list of all of the British MPs who have been murdered, and until yesterday it was all-male. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Records_of_members_… (I do think your point is probably generally right, and female politicans are a more common focus for anger and blame than male ones, but the numbers were interesting.)
I want to give Sansa the biggest hug.
(I get to see my mom’s dog tonight! Also my mom! Also my dad! But also the dog!)
You can’t talk to the dog on the phone- it’s perfectly reasonable that you miss the dog more than your parents.
I am very sad that, since both of my cats died in the last year, visiting my parents will now only involve seeing my parents, without the joy of cat interaction. It was the thing I most looked forward to.
Sending good vibes to you, Nikki. And to your dad.
With all the bad news this week, I’ve really been perseverating on why people suck. Reddit gamer dude is joining the puzzle — why do you act like that when you know it’s not okay? How could he have had this nasty streak that he hid under the radar for 5 years in an intimate relationship?
And replying to myself just to continue my mystification because I have two relatives a lot like this – they seem really reasonable, even sweet, but put them in charge of a Facebook account (not even anonymous!) and shit rapidly gets weird. What the hell. I’m basically the same person online as in real life, probably even more cautious because I’m talking to strangers. Is that just me?
I’ve been playing a beta test of a team tactics game, and sometimes if a player doesn’t load, they’re replaced by a bot. Our team had a bot that was playing unhelpfully for some reason, and one of my teammates was yelling at it in the chat. I finally said “dude, it’s a bot.” And he said something snarky like “Oh, congrats on finally figuring it out” followed by “Of course I know it’s a bot. I wouldn’t flame a real person.”
Suuuuure you wouldn’t. *massive eye roll*
I’ve been in rounds where my teammates make terrible plays and we lose and I don’t say anything. But one time there were 2 not so great players on my team, and the fourth guy was yelling at them the whole time. At the end he was going “we lost the second the three of you were put on my team.” I said nothing. There is no way to respond to someone who gets that worked up about a game. Honestly, I find it funny most of the time because it’s so ridiculous.
It is ridiculous, but I hate to think of the adolescent girls out there who might really take those insults to heart. I’m feeling sensitive this week but I know vulnerable people are out there getting shit on just because the web is anonymous and I really wish there were a way to obliterate nasty people the instant they behave this way twice. Everybody gets one ugly moment, I’m not a monster.
Oh, yeah, I could see 15-year-old me getting upset by it. But 27-year-old me is thinking “haha this dude is definitely overcompensating for something.”
Not just you. It is baffling. Online everyone can see what you’re saying. It’s like shouting abuse in the public square.
I’m guessing there is some kind of cognitive disconnect going on where since they can’t see the people on the other side of the screen they’re not experienced as real people.
YES. I’m extra cautious online because I don’t know the people I’m talking to!
Sending good vibes to Nikki’s dad and the rest of their family, I hope he’s feeling better soon, and that the rest of you can breathe easy.
Woah at gamer girl question. It’s so gross but I 100% believe it. Not a knock on gamers– I think many of my friends and family fall into that category– but seeing how someone behaves in “not real life” situations really says something about them, where they might be more guarded in “real life,” especially in the first several months of a relationship. (I currently date someone who games, and he’s downright puritanical in fictional situations, to the point where I have to remind him that the game isn’t Sid Meier’s Best Friends Race and he’s gonna have to declare war at some point to get the warmonger victory.)
Sid Meier’s Best Friends Race
100% would play
I don’t play Civ, but from what I understand, you actually can win by being everyone’s friend? But he was specifically going for the war victory, since he had yet to achieve that mode of winning.
Yes! There are many ways to win without declaring war, including a “be everyone’s friend” option. This is one of the reasons I like it so much, I never have to declare war and can still win.
if you don’t /have/ to fight, it’s much more fun to dominate culturally, religiously, scientifically and economically. It’s a challenge!
Agreed! I mean, look, I’ll fight back and take a city or two if you attack me, but that’s not what I care about. I want to be the best at stuff that matters.
I feel like this is a less workable tactic against humans (who are often more motivated to Get This Game Of Civ Over With Already, Damnit), but against the AI it works fine.
Also sound Machiavellian tactics.
This is how I play. My teenage son despairs.
This is true! And it is why I like Civ.
I have so many feelings for that woman who found out her boyfriend was the worst kind of misogynistic gamer troll. Just.
This is the most appropriate response possible.
“You have sexually transmitted crazy mouth. Dealbreaker.”
Did you read her update on it after she talked to the guy? She included things that he’s done in the past. Including this gem:
“He wore threadbare gym shorts to my grandfather’s funeral and watched porn on his phone during the service.” https://www.reddit.com/r/relationships/comments/4…
Wait, wasn’t that from a different post? (which was also awful, and that woman should also dump her boyfriend)
Yeah, that’s a different awful guy, but there are so many of them that I mix them up all the time.
Lots of hugs to you and your family, Nikki
Here is a truly beautiful project being undertaken by Orlando’s theatre community to protect the Pulse funerals.
I’m so glad they are doing that. It was only a matter of time before WBC turned up being their vile selves and this is such a beautiful, caring response to that. Do you know if there’s a way to donate to this project?
The Orlando Shakespeare Theatre has a donations link with online donation info as well as a phone number. It might be worth calling to investigate whether you can direct a donation to this project specifically, or if they just accept general fund donations.
Thank you for the link. I had no idea about the planned protests (at the funerals!!!) and I am so ragey I can hardly see, but also so happy to see artists come together to help.
Tearing up. How beautiful.
Loving the idea of religiously-motivated protesters being kept out by stern-looking angels.
I better quit lurking while I still can. You are all amazing and wonderful!
Also I can make a relevant comment! The beautiful amazing treasure of a podcast Another Round did an interview early on with Rachel Khaadzi Ghansah which was delightful;; and I can highly recommend her piece on Dave Chappelle. I honestly didn’t know a ton about his career before I read the piece but it made me respect him a ton (he quit because values! Not down with the turn of his celebrity-hood! Bought a farm in Ohio! Adorbs.) I am new to this so I won’t try to link yet and will trust in your googling powers.
<3 u toasties
Happy delurking!
GAAAAAAH BEARS SO CUTE *faints*
Yay! Thank you!
Also yess Caity Weaver celeb profile on my problematic crush, Kim. I’m prepared to be alternately charmed and horrified, but I don’t think I can get on to GQ at work, so it will have to be my Friday night treat.
The photos in the article are very much NSFW, but the profile is amazeballs.
Oh it absolutely is a treat.
Yes it was a delight and I am here for anything that Caity does! She is a treasure.
What I especially liked was that Caity maintains this perfect tone. She doesn’t let Kim’s life go uninterrogated, and she notes the absurdity – subtly – while also respecting her subject.
I followed a link to a GQ profile of Taylor Swift by a dude, and coming right after Caity’s, the tone change was especially jarring. You could argue that they’re at the same level of controlled image! But you’d never disdain a man who controls his image to the same degree. The interview read as aggressive and patronizing. (“Swift speaks with a deeper voice when she’s saying smart things!! And higher when she is passionate!! The higher is annoying to me, a man! So I will not take her passionate talk seriously until she lowers her voice and says the same things but, you know, more smartly!” UGH.)
Basically, C. Weaver for all the profiles, please and thank you.
It was so good! And I was super, super reminded that I really do like Kim as a culture figure. There’s something about how North collapses on Kim’s lap with playground silliness and the weird gated community to create a “normal” life that I’m 100% charmed by.
It is ALARMINGLY CHARMING. Also feeling weirdly affectionate towards the Kimye relationship now, oh man.
“He started getting really, really verbally abusive. Saying horrible, largely misogynistic things to me. Calling me specific names that he has told me on several occasions that he would never use because they “sicken him”. He even told me that he wished someone would “put me in my place” in explicitly violent terms.”
RED MIST.
Unrelated, but where is this image from? Matt Bomer and Armie Hammer touching each other closely is something I didn’t know I wanted to see so badly.
I mean, less murderous would be better, but maybe there are other scenes from this movie/TVshow?
That’s the Man from UNCLE movie, but it’s Henry Cavill.
Henry Cavill is a great substitute for Matt Bomer! They’re like the Zooey Deschanel/Katy Perry of pale-skinned, dark-haired, ridiculously good-looking people.
How’s the movie?
Super fun, colorful 60s spy movie. I really liked it.
Awesome, I will check it out. Thank you!
The movie was pleasantly surprising! We went into watching it with low expectations, thinking it would just be mildly entertaining plus, you know, HENRY CAVILL. But we ended up really enjoying it! I’m not saying it’s a Great Film or even a particularly Good One — but the three leads were fun, it had good scenery, good period costumes, good music. Nice humor. Ending ran a little long but so does every movie these days. It’s worth a watch, at least, on a night you’re not sure what else to watch. Also, we watched it while eating ice cream and I highly recommend that as well.
I was surprisingly charmed by this movie! And by Arnie and Henry arguing over women’s fashion.
Don’t forget about ALICIA FREAKING VIKANDER
quellthesparkle is correct, this is Man from UNCLE, and it’s the early part of the film when they are rivals, before the Reluctant Team Up That Leads to Hidden Admirations and Maybe More.
There is a scene where Henry Cavill sits in a truck and eats someone else’s lunch while Armie Hammer fights an on-fire boat. And then Henry sighs a long-suffering sigh and decides to go ahead and save his teammate/new boyfriend.
Yesssssss. That is wonderful and I love homoerotic subtext in all forms.
That scene is amazing and I loved that movie.
“Damn. I left my jacket in there.”
That scene where they are trying to decide whether or not to keep the bad guy alive or not was absolutely hysterical. I hadn’t laughed that hard in ages.
Dunno that I agree w/ Prudie on the dog issue. I deal with a close family member with diagnosed mental illness and addiction with similar behaviors and there are times where you have to make hard choices. It’s not like she put the dog in a shelter and, yea, fostering may have been the better choice over giving the dog away…But the kind of person who can’t manage themselves psychologically or physically might not be able to reliably care for a dog and it’s not always the responsibility of family to take on everything that responsible ownership entails when its destructive. During manic phases, I’ve had to deal with someone who already owned sight hounds getting a pet rabbit with no prior experience or interest in rodents and at other times threatening to get more dogs, despite the incredible expense in money and the time of the more functional family members eaten up by the dogs already owned. That rabbit was miserable and died prematurely and there are times when “consulting” with a person experiencing certain phases/types of mental health crises/diagnoses isn’t productive.*
So maybe she made the right call, maybe she didn’t but making decisions about other people’s pets when they have serious mental illness has no roadmap and Prudie’s response seemed to imply that there was only one right way to deal with this.
*Just to be clear, I am not trying to generalize about mental illness or pet obligations but to say that with very extensive personal experience, I sympathize with this daughter and, again, there’s no roadmap.
We live in fear that my mother in law dies before her serval cats. They are terrifying and I don’t know what we would do with them
What?! She has these as pets?!
Why yes she does! They mix them with regular cats, so they are on a spectrum of servalness, I guess. She has a few that are basically full, and then down the line to monstrous regular cats. It’s basically rich lady animal hoarding 🙁
My goodness! How big are the monstrous regular cats? Could I ride them like ponies?
Send them to me!*
*Ok this is not a good idea as I don’t have any experience with exotic pets but I have always wanted a Savannah or a Bengal or some other $$$ asshole semi-wild-cat.
No, I’m sorry, that woman (no matter how awful a parent) needs her dog back until it’s clear that her illness actually prevents her from caring for Maggie. The daughter said only that while the woman was hospitalized she needed a temporary caregiver for her, not that she was neglecting Maggie otherwise. It sounds like the mother has adequate care when she’s not in the hospital, so it’s not like the home situation is already plainly catastrophic and the dog clearly in harm’s way. I wonder if she even told the colleague the whole story, because “hey, I have to look after this dog while my mom’s in the hospital and she can’t get along with my dog, want to take her for good?” is not a question any decent person would say yes to.
YOU CAN’T TAKE SOMEONE’S DOG AWAY BASED ON AN AMATEUR MENTAL-ILLNESS DIAGNOSIS WITHOUT REAL EVIDENCE OF DANGER TO THE DOG. Period. End of story.
None of us know the specifics and I agree that unofficial diagnosis is no basis for action, however, paid home health aides are not paid to provide the full spectrum of care and attention a dog requires, afaik. “She also has a progressive, debilitating illness that confines her to her home with the help of paid aides. She spent four months hospitalized this year,” tells us that she isn’t even remaining stable in her home with those aides and that her interpretation of mental health was not the only factor.
I can only speak from my own experience caring for someone with severe mental illness, addiction, and physical deterioration and say I have sympathy, whether she made the wrong call is a separate question. We can’t expect people in challenging circumstances – particularly those for which most of us are not trained – to get everything right or to sacrifice what we would/feel they should sacrifice. I choose to presume neither the best nor the worst and hope that I am not judged so harshly when I inevitably fail.
Speaking of presumptions, when describing why she gave the dog away, the letter literally says nothing, NOTHING, about the care the dog has received when the mother is in the home. (Nor about what duties the mom’s caregivers or social circle take on.) There certainly are situations where a person becomes unable to care for their pets and is unable to recognize it due to mental illness, but your conclusion that the dog was receiving such poor care that she could reasonably be taken away without the mother’s consent is based on no evidence offered by the letter-writer. You have read that into the letter completely.
If someone entrusts me with their dog while they’re sick and I GIVE IT AWAY, man, the world can judge away, I’ll deserve it. This is not some agonizing moral caregiving dilemma of complex nuance. She couldn’t keep the two dogs together, so she gave the dog away. Zero training required not to get that one so very wrong. Zero sympathy on this particular decision, even if the situation overall must be very difficult for her.
I disagree that it’s a safe assumption that Maggie was well cared for. The letter writer may have assumed that the description of the progressive illness and the four month-long hospitalization was clear enough indication that the mother was physically incapable of caring for Maggie. It’s also unclear to me whether when the letter writer later said that her mother had the dog for 5 months that included the 4 months in the hospital or not. It also didn’t read to me like the mother had entrusted the letter writer with care of Maggie so much as dumped Maggie on the letter writer by default.
To me, we just don’t have all the information required to know whether the mother can care for the dog or not. That’s why I wish Mallory had addressed both possibilities and then answered the letter writer’s actual question. Even if the letter writer was in the wrong, the situation described was challenging and emotionally taxing (and possibly financially draining–two emergency vet visits is not cheap!) and IMHO, deserving of more compassion.
Yeah as I said in a thread above, that letter and the people supporting the LR just make it /really clear/ that people /really hate/ mentally ill disabled people as long as you slap the label of “manipulative” on us
True, but on the other hand, the letter also says she has live-in help so it’s not like the dog is isolated or neglected.
If she has (e.g.) home health aides from an agency, pet care and socialization may be beyond the scope of their duties.
Echoing Mrs_Peel, if the live-in help is a home health aide, their sole job is to take care of their patient. Because of the nature of the job, aides often have periods of downtime, so it’s really common for the families they’re working for to try to rope them into acting as housekeepers/maids, nannies or pet-caretakers (usually without paying extra) since “they aren’t doing anything else” at the time. That’s not the aide’s jobs and it takes their attention away from the patient. Many of these aides are working long hours, having to lift adults in or out of wheelchairs or beds or other backbreaking stuff, adding duties makes it longer and takes a greater toll, and it’s taking advantage of someone who is severely underpaid and has few resources to turn to (no on-site supervisor so it’s their word against the family, most states have no unions, there’s a major lack of laws protecting in-home help, etc).
I lovingly suspect the people most worried about the dog above all else have never had to care for their own abuser. 😐
Sending you and your family love and hugs, Nikki.
Sorry about your dad, Nikki. I’ll be thinking of y’all, wishing him well.
I am 100% in agreement with sending love to Nikki’s dad, but as the mother of a toddler… have you ever seen Toy Story 3? Because the LAST THING in the world anyone needs is a hug from Lotso. That dude is straight. up. evil.
Well, so am I!
Okay, no, you make a very fine point. I rescind my evil gif, Nikki.
I had no idea that GQ is a nipple-friendly publication. I skimmed through the Kim Kardashian article and was plummeted by nipples. Really woke me up.
Thanks for the heads up! I’m in a coffee shop with a child staring over my shoulder and I was just about to click over!
YEAH AND AT WORK TOO (for me)
Whew! Nothing like a surprise nipple overload to really kickstart your day!
Yep, seriously regretting opening that on my work computer.
I had to back out of that since I’m at work! Mods, can we get an NSFW tag applied to that link, please?
London based queer ladies of the Toast and fellow Toasterstraddlers – is there anyone else out there who finds that as an older-ish bisexual lady they don’t really have anyone to go to Pride with next weekend? If so, can we maybe go together?
I haven’t been very keen on Pride in the past few years but Orlando has reminded me why it’s important. The world seems to be stood on its head by the politics of hatred and fear right now – I want to go stand with my people this year and remember that as doomed as everything is right now, possibility and hope and love exist.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/435704426638315/
Join the London Toasties group and ask! We’re a lovely bunch.
I’ve never done London Pride, and I’ve heard its not so good, very corporate and money grabbing, but I’m gonna try and go this year, even if I just make the after party in Trafalgar Sq. I feel like its really important this year, even as a straight person, to stand up with the LGBTQ community and show Pride.
I went home to Dublin for Pride last year, after I missed the marriage equality vote, I just felt like I should go. It was brilliant.
Ooh, London Toast group! Have added myself, pending approval. Cheers for the suggestion!
Also, there’s a Big Bi Breakfast on Pride morning – I’m bringing biscuits (gf and vegan, if I get organised).
Not going on to the main Pride stuff from there, but many attendees will. http://london.carpediem.cd/events/345422-the-bisc…
I would totally go with you but sadly will be out of town! Always keen to meet Sisters of the Toast IRL though. 🙂 I’ll get on the London FB group too.
I quickly skimmed the comments on the gamer boyfriend question to see if OP had any updates and it was a lot of depressing “avoid any games that have voice chat” advice for “how to game while female.” Sigh.
She needs to confront him about this like right now and see what he does. And if it were me, I don’t think either response I’m envisioning (being horrified and making a lot of excuses, or doubling down and saying that’s just what you do online and he wouldn’t have done it if he’d known it was her) would prevent me from breaking up with him.
The worst response would be him being mad at her and making her feel guilty for not announcing her presence to him fully or confronting him in the moment. Ugh.
I wouldn’t recommend confrontation because he’s a nasty person. I would suggest breaking it off and then mailing a print-out of the chat so he knows she knows what he said. But not necessarily making the break-up directly about the chat.
It IS about the chat. It’s about what the chat uncovered.
That Julie Rodgers piece hits the nail on the head for me. After growing up Catholic and going through various phases of intense faith and “why do I have to tell all these old guys my sins?” questioning, what really solidified my departure from the Church was a Christian Social Ethics class I took in college.
We read this book called Doing Christian Social Ethics from the Margins, and this book, much more so than 12 years of Catholic schooling, enforced upon me the idea that Jesus was liberal!!! He was not a Republican!! I read that book and never looked back. Historical Jesus is so much better than Catholic Jesus.
This looks like a great book–am going to pick it up. Thanks for the recommendation!
Of course! It really triggered an awakening in me.
Here’s the link:� �https://www.amazon.com/Doing-Christian-Ethics-Margins-Miguel/dp/1570755515
So my coffee won’t kill me as long as it’s not super hot?
*blows on 3rd cup of coffee*
Sweet.
i work with the firm chief of Harvard teaching hospital (& liver expert) & he talks about coffee like it’s a godsend. for him, it’s *the* health drink. and he has a whole, fantastic, green tea rant about how there are no good studies about the benefits of green tea, but all the health nuts are like “ooooh, antioxidants” for which there is dubious evidence. but coffee, that’s had multiple studies over the years is terrific but has a negative reputation. He says “drink as much coffee until as your body can handle, until you get jittery.” i take his word for it!
See? My doctor’s all “You should drink less. You should exercise more.” Does he ever commend me on my prodigious coffee drinking? No. Never.
OT – I spent a couple/few hours last night re-reading my Toast comments on my Intense Debate profile. It started innocently – I wanted to see when I signed up and then I wondered if there was an easy way to see my most popular comments (there’s not) and then I had to re-read the articles and the next thing I knew it was almost bedtime.
I want to share my preliminary findings. In more than 500 comments, my most popular comments were:
1 – a comment about household germs on Mallory’s masterful screed about toilet seat paper cover things (108 likes)
2 – a comment about how to tell if you’re in an opera on Nikki’s awesome piece (you look nothing like your maidservant but you trade places and no one can tell)
3 – a comment about the queer subtext in Midsummer’s Night Dream and how my HS English teacher blew us all away by saying that Titania and Oberon were fighting over an attractive young man.
In other words, EXACTLY what you’d expect from the toast commentariat.
I like this game.
Haha, I did this a while ago, I think my most popular comment is UGH YES THROW THESE MEN INTO THE SUN. Figures.
I do this sometimes. It is very comforting!
Heh, mine is about Ted Cruz.
Oh, this is fun! I do wish we could sort our comments.
Mine seem to be (in order of most highly upvoted):
1 – The story I told about shouting down a bunch of evo-psych sexist shit bags at a party. (MISANDRY)
2 – My sarcastic mock review of Zootopia reviews (TALKING ANIMALS. MANY FRESH. MUCH WOW)
3 – And this one will be easier to just quote rather than describe:
“The other day my sister made some off hand remark about maybe, sort of, someday, thinking about possibly looking into getting an IUD.
I vaulted across the couch and got in her face like, “HAVE YOU HEARD THE GOOD NEWS!?” ”
I also noticed that the vast majority of my participation is in Link Roundups and Open Threads. I kinda feel bad about that? Like, I always wanted to engage more with the content here, and now I won’t really get the chance to 🙁
Rather than finding specifics, I’m focusing on general trends:
1 – Meryl Streep is better than you.
2 – Schoolboy Latin translations in the Middle Ages
3 – badass teenage girls doing what they do
Hah. Well, Meryl Streep is better than the rest of us.
I like the theme idea. I was surprised how many of my comments were smart ass comments about books or movies.
I have two comments with approval that’s head and shoulders (and knees and toes) above the rest:
1 – (Regarding a strange deleted comment on Nikki’s casual racism piece, which called her…) “a member of an insect race”? Idiot. Once the Fleet arrives, we’ll show them an insect race to be afraid of. But I’ve already said too much.
2 – (No real context) Apropos of little, whenever Mallory describes her relationship with Nicole, it sounds like she decided the best life was to be a Knight Of The Pen, sworn ever to the service of the Lady Nicole.
Hah. Those are great.
Thank you!
Sending you all the internet love, Nikki.
Seconded. <3
I was constantly refreshing for updates on Jo Cox yesterday. I’m going to be at my old college this weekend (which she attended ) for an event that was supposed to be about celebrating finally letting women in 30 years ago (because we were historically even more shit than the rest of Cambridge ) and I don’t know what it will feel like.
Oh, that sounds like it will be really strange. I hope it’s okay for you.
Did anyone else read the /relationships post with the woman whose friend changed her wedding hotel reservation to the tune of another thousand dollars without going ‘oh, that might be a problem’?
YES!!!!
I have to check /relationships every couple hours because I have an internet problem. Thank you toasties for giving me an unhealthy obsession.
It is just thoughtless! And the friend being offending that she needed to pay them back and “not feeling comfortable anymore”… This whole thing.
SURPRISE not everyone has an extra thousand dollars in their checking accounts! augh.
Don’t go, girl, don’t go! (To the wedding)
I was on the phone to my mother last night, complaining about life as I do, and she told me I shouldn’t be drinking coffee; she read a thing that said coffee blocks your creativity (This is not an usual kind of this for her to say, she’s quite woo-woo*) and does something to you’re brain.
When I pointed out that I drink maybe 1 latte a day, she was surprised and said that’s quite good. Honestly my mother doesn’t know me at all.
So yeah, it might not give you cancer, but you gotta protect you creativity people! Big Coffee is coming for you!
*While also being a complete hypocrite because she drinks at least 5 cups of black coffee a day.
To the idea that coffee blocks your creativity, my only response is “Nuh uh.”
I know right?
Honestly I wonder where this shit comes from sometimes.
Is it bad that part of me kind of wants this to be true? Deep down, I’d kind of like to have an excuse for not creating all that much, other than just not being that creative.
I don’t want it to be true for the opposite reason – I don’t drink coffee, so I can’t blame its blocking effects for my lack of creativity; it’s just me being shit.
Just drove my mom to the airport after a week of her visiting, and my God, she doesn’t know me at all either. I kind of forget, you know? And then we’ll talk about literally anything and I’m struck with it. So, anyway, there with you.
Also my mom isn’t woo-woo while being a hypocrite, she’s “super liberal” in her own wording, while being super conservative, in reality. I don’t want to go too into it, but I did feel validated that slavery was mentioned as the primary reason for secession in the South Carolina Declaration of Independence from the United States document of 1860 or 61. She had previously stated that slavery had nothing to do with it. Suck it, Mom. (Sorry to vent, I’m just still reeling from it all.)
OK, I’m not sure I could make it through a full episode of Keeping Up with the Kardashians if you paid me (OK, maybe…) — but I could read that article all day. I love a well run, well organized group no matter what it’s for…
In gossipier parts of it, and since we were discussing Hiddleswift earlier this week — what do y’all think about the Kanye v. Taylor discussion in that article? I wouldn’t even know where to begin with who to believe…
I believe Kim. I think Taylor may have misremembered the conversation, hence her later outrage, and also might have had misgivings at the time that didn’t actually come across in her conversation with Kanye (I imagine it’s quite hard to get across misgivings when you’re having a conversation with Kanye) but hey – Kim’s got the tape.
Yeah, the whole she’s always filming thing — and we know that to be true — that’s pretty damning.
I’m also team Kimye on this. There’s an underlying current of Swift’s brand that is “classy” and “safe for young white girls” in a way that feels very, very raced/classed to me. And I think that being called a bitch in a Kanye song is a way for her to gain relevance outside of her natural fanbase, knowing that she can pivot to a Higher Ground against those “trashy” “sexy” “naked” Kardashians and crazy (lying) black man. And she knows that people will just believe her because she’s Good and Kimye et al are just “drama.” I don’t know what Kimye has to gain by lying about Swift’s approval. They certainly don’t need to manufacture controversy with a popstar to stay relevant; perpetuating it doesn’t service their brand in any way. And when I compare that to how they handle genuine controversy (Blac Chyna, addiction, Caitlyn’s transition, sex tapes, murder), they do so with surprising grace. And there’s a current of this in many of Swift’s feuds, Nicki Minaj especially comes to mind (that she immediately assumed Minaj commenting on the VMA’s black-out of black women’s bodies, while celebrating white appropriation was about her). This of course isn’t to say that Swift is explicitly racist, but the lily whiteness of her brand, and how she uses it, makes me uneasy/skeptical.
The Jo Cox thing is just horrendous and if one more person says her death shouldn’t be politicised I will scream. SHE WAS A POLITICIAN. How is that not already political?
I have recently started watching the various and sundry Kardashian shows and my crush on Kim grows and grows. Yes, her image is meticulously curated for public consumption BUT she comes across as kind, extremely business savvy (like, that’s an understatement), she is very supportive of her family and is highly emotionally intelligent. I don’t think those are bad attributes to model to the world. I don’t think she has a dark side, we see pretty much all of her sides. Plus, she is beautiful, she rejoices in her beauty and she enjoys other people enjoying her beauty. I love Kim K and I don’t care who knows it!!
My only Kim K complaint is that she sometimes seems like a wet blanket, but I don’t really like clubs either so who am I to judge.
Every family needs one!
My whole family refer to ourselves, proudly, as “funsuckers”.
I don’t know that much about her but her comments on getting advice on how to approach her stepmother’s transition suggest some degree of humility.
This amazing specimen: Hey Ladies finalist or Hey Ladies finalist?
Nailed it.
The responses on Reddit to the gamerbro story — WOW. Basically they fall into 6 categories:
1. Your boyfriend is a misogynist lying douche, dump him immediately. (Agree.)
2. Sit down with him and explain to him how this behavior is hurtful and unacceptable. (Because he innocently thinks “Hope you get raped and murdered” is just how the inhabitants of this planet say “hello”.)
3. Here is what you can do/some other games you can play to avoid being verbally abused by your boyfriend in the future. (Also, try not to get yourself raped, mkay hon?)
4. You were being dishonest and trapped him by not explicitly revealing your identity once the abuse started. (I can’t even.)
5. The internet turns people into assholes. (Right, blame inanimate, anonymous forces.)
6. Why aren’t you spelling out the exact words he used to supposedly insult you? Why do you expect us to accept your subjective characterization of his words, which you are not reporting in their entirety? It’s very suspicious. (Bitches be lyin’.)
Excellent summary.
The defense of “this is just what gamers do, he didn’t mean it and he didn’t know it was you so you shouldn’t take it personally” argument makes me absolutely INSANE. How can anyone not see that that’s absolutely just as problematic?
It really pissed me off how quickly that thread descended into “don’t give up on games! Give games a chance HERE’S HOW”. I am a woman who plays video games and has worked in the video game industry and I don’t give a flying fuck whether or not other people like games. Even well meaning gamers are so fucking defensive about gaming that they can’t even stop themselves from basically saying shit like “Oh that’s awful your boyfriend is terrible dump him but maybe try gaming again!” Why. Why do all you assholes care if she ever games again. Oh, right, because gamer “culture” is characterized by crippling insecurity and a bottomless need for validation.
Anyway. There’s my rant on that. The only response that matters to that woman’s situation is: your boyfriend has shown you who he really is. Believe him. Dump him. Get out, get safe, don’t look back.
I’ve been hooked on that subreddit since Nicole started linking it, but there are some very weird internal memes, and some people who definitely go crazy trying to blame (usually) female posters.
1, It’s unfair to cut your hair away your boyfriend doesn’t like and you should be prepared for the consequences
2. If you’ve ever broken a promise–even one made under coercion or flippantly or under different circumstances or regarding a favor you do repeatedly but forgetting one time–everything is your fault
3. Gamer “nerd” rage/road rage is normal and can’t be in anyway compared to your real life (there was one yesterday about road rage that I can’t even talk about it)
4. Either no one is entitled to anything ever and if they feel slighted by a gift/inheritance disparity (like the awful car grandparents) that person is an asshole OR parents must treat their children exactly equally when it comes to finances, regardless of circumstance–like if you pay for one daughter’s medical treatment, you should be prepared to hand over that much cash to your other daughter so she isn’t punished for being healthy
Speaking of r/relationships, the original iteration of this thread was bad enough but the details in the update are HORRIFYING: https://nr.reddit.com/r/relationships/comments/4o… Porn! At her grandfather’s funeral!
(Although I do have to say- reading that subreddit and having gotten out of my first ever relationship about a month ago have made me realize that I . . . could easily be one of the women writing these posts. Like, all the comments are along the lines of “how could you put up with this???? but the scary thing is I could see myself putting up with it in the name of not rocking the boat/being a good girlfriend/etc.)
I am totally the person who puts up with it to avoid rocking the boat. Until I figure out a way to go Witness Protection Program. Because narcissists and sociopaths are deadly quicksand who will destroy your life.
– What really gets me about the gamer thing is how he wasn’t just one of those guys, but had made a point of telling her that he wasn’t one of those guys and couldn’t stand them. I mean, I’ve had one potential relationship fizzle out because we tried playing WoW together and they weren’t at all the way that they had been previously via other forms of communication, but this is a whole ‘nother ball of wax entirely; deliberate deception is always a deal-killer.
– I tend to ignore practically any sort of scare-study involving coffee because there’s absolutely no consistency to them. Someone could come out with a paper tomorrow telling me that coffee makes tentacles grow from my face, and my reaction would be, well, at least I’ll be awake for it.
“Someone could come out with a paper tomorrow telling me that coffee makes tentacles grow from my face, and my reaction would be, well, at least I’ll be awake for it.”
This made me laugh out loud. Gleefully.
Me too.
I feel like WoW is a good litmus test for a relationship. Fortunately I found my partner in WoW, so I already knew what there was to know.
There are a few Toasties on bnet and who WoW, if you care to join us, btw. It’s been pretty dead what with how long Draenor has been out but there will be all kinds of fun stuff to do in Legion. It looks good.
Tentacles grow out of my face? Can they type? Then I could use my hands to hold more cups of coffee! (Or, I suppose, the tentacles could hold the coffee cups and my hands could type. But I’d prefer the reverse.)
And wasn’t part of the point that her boyfriend is loudly and publicly not one of those guys? And he’s rendered that entire identity suspect by his actions, so she’s probably not going to be super impressed by your insistence that you hate it when guys do that.
I’m almost always suspicious of guys who make a big show out of hating sexist language and pointing out how terrible other guys are for using it. They really don’t like having it turned around on them.
And those are often the guys complaining that women “only go for assholes.” So the thing is, friend, I know that the asshole is an asshole. He’s revealed his character defects to me, and I know what I’m getting. With you, I’m sure that there is something, but I have to wait for the sudden and inevitable betrayal. So if we’re accepting the premise that I, a woman, prefer assholes to gentlemen like you, well.
So sorry to hear about Nikki's dad, sending lots of good wishes!
Hah. Those are great.
well, there is a weird thing over here in the UK where people don't seem to realise that Americans are aware of sarcasm, because we use some phrases sincerely some of the time (my favourite is "with all due respect" – dude, if you ONLY use that insultingly, you have no plausible deniability when your boss calls you on it!)
As a games industry person dating another games industry person, we both agree: gamers are bad, dump your gamer boyfriend, especially if he’s shallow enough to miss a “gamer girl” ex as though that is the very depth and texture of intimacy. If you want to share a hobby or profession with your lover, make sure both of you are deep enough into it with a sense of humor to also “hate” it too, and stay away from self serious creeps.