NICOLE WAS DELIVERED OF A HANDSOME BABY BOY YESTERDAY MORNING LET US ALL THANK THE UNIVERSE FOR GIVING US ANOTHER CLIFFE CHILD
In case you missed it yesterday, we had a fireside chat about contract terms.
The BBC on this week’s school shooting in Pakistan:
Seven Taliban attackers wearing bomb vests cut through a wire fence to gain entry to the school, before launching an attack on an auditorium where children were taking an exam.
Gunmen then went from room to room at the military-run school, shooting pupils and teachers where they found them in a siege that lasted eight hours, survivors say.
A total of 125 people were wounded at Peshawar’s Army Public School, which teaches boys and girls from both military and civilian backgrounds. All seven attackers were killed, while hundreds of people were evacuated…
Zulfiqar Ahmad, 45, the head of the mathematics department who was shot four times during the attack told the BBC he did not believe any of the 18 students in his class had survived.
In the forty-two years since those words were spoken, nobody has stepped on the Moon.
Yeah, man, don’t do that.
Leigh Anne Tuohy profiled two Black kids, invaded their privacy and interrogated them, but somehow people are behaving as if this is some kind of wonderful social justice moment. No. Not even a little. This is some fucked up racial profiling combined with white saviourism, and it is racist as hell. Assuming that those kids were doing something bad was racist. Assuming that she could take up space at their table was racist. Insisting that they talk to her was disrespectful and racist. Wanting evidence that they weren’t up to no good was racist. Treating those boys as props to make her look good and then posting this picture publicly (and honestly, I wonder if the boys consented to that) is incredibly racist.
Also, can we talk about how problematic using the phrase “don’t judge a book by its cover” is when it comes to talking about race? First of all, it begins with the assumption that the “cover” (or in this case, skin) tells you something unappealing about the contents of the book or person. It also infers that there is something unattractive or bad about the “cover” (or, again, skin). I can’t believe that I have to say this, but: there is nothing wrong or bad about Black skin. Black skin is not unpleasant or ugly, and to imply that dark skin might devalue someone is really, really fucked up.
Black people aren’t things. They don’t exist just so that white people can make a point about themselves. These are two real kids who not only had to endure this woman’s microaggressions but have now had their image splashed all over social media – the Facebook picture alone has 150,000 likes and over 12,000 shares. Step away for a hot second from this white woman’s narrative, and think about how those teenagers must feel – having their privacy invaded, having assumptions made about them based on their race, and now having a white woman use their images to get praise for herself.
I’m not proud of this. I’m not justifying this. But I already had plans to go see The Interview — I KNOW — and this just makes me want to see it more. I don’t even have a link for this. You’ve been on the Internet; you know what I’m talking about.
I will probably find a way to see it. I’m not proud of that either. I also saw This Is The End. And you know what? Fuck you, I had a great time.
I will never get tired of reading about John Hughes. Ditto Harold Ramis.
“This holiday season, please join Just Detention International in reminding prisoner rape survivors that they are not alone or forgotten. Send your words of hope today. Your message means the world to survivors, providing them with encouragement at a time when it’s easy to feel alone.”
“The summer I was 25 I spent many of my days writing advice columns for teenage boys and a very few of my evenings trying to determine whether or not I was a stoner. I smoked pot by myself in my San Francisco kitchen, using a sad sort of pipe fashioned from a toilet roll tube and a bit of aluminum foil. Even though I was alone, I felt terrifically self-conscious — not because of the smoking accoutrements, although they were embarrassing — but because I felt like someone pretending to be a person I most definitely was not, and likely would never be.”
I don’t love anybody like I love Leah Reich.
Here is a video of John Candy as Orson Welles on the first episode of the Billy Crystal Show.
WELP:
Osculum infame is the name of a witch’s supposed ritual greeting upon meeting with the Devil. The name means The Shameful Kiss, or The Kiss of Shame since it involved kissing the devil’s anus, his other mouth. According to folklore, it was this kiss that allowed the Devil to seduce women.
MALLORY I LOVE YOU thank you for declaring “Nicole was delivered of a handsome baby boy” because I love it and it makes me feel that Nicole is our co-queen among you and Roxane and Other-Nicole, and you rule above us all in a well-appointed and tasteful castle by the sea.
ALL HAIL TOAST BABY.
I got a lovely mental image of Cair Paravel just there.
My heart is breaking over Pakistan. My heart was broken over Ferguson.
I don’t know what I can do. I have no money to donate, no emotional energy to spend on helping. All I seem to be able to do is draw attention to these things. But it doesn’t seem like enough. Children are being murdered. It’s not right.
I know exactly what you mean. It’s all so horrifying.
From what I’ve seen Pakistanis saying, the important thing to understand is that this isn’t about the Taliban being anti-education, or even anti-secular-education–it was a retaliatory act against the kids’ parents, many of whom are in the army, which mounted a significant offensive recently in Talibani territory (North Waziristan). And that operation has ties to US foreign policy. And then you add in the history of the US actually arming/supporting the Taliban in the past.
So IF you are American (I don’t know, after all), the place to concentrate your energies, whenever and however possible, is basically the global interventionist policy and the GWOT. I’m not saying I know how to do that, precisely, but it feels slightly more tangible and workable than “somehow find a way to make what happened unhappen” to me, at least. I don’t know if that helps at all. 🙁
I’m a brit, not an American, but I am pretty certain my government is complicit as well.
I have no idea how I can help or prevent that, other than trying to spread the information as far as possible and doing my best with my vote.
These people who killed children, and btw not all of the parents had ties to the military, did this out of cowardice. Go shoot at the army or argue with parliament or what equivalent there is in PAK. Don’t shoot children and set the principal on fire in front of them and claim it a tactical maneuver.
ETA: This was published December 9 on the BBC, the Taliban are getting scared and is used to PAK playing both sides (saying yes to USA and to the Taliban).
I am not, of course, suggesting that this is in any way a legitimate tactic. And of course not all their parents are in the army; i phrased that poorly, I apologize. Mostly I just wanted to make sure we are thinking about this beyond “senseless tragedy” or “fanaticism” because there IS more to it than that (though of course at the end of the day we are still talking about mass murder of children), and I have read many pleas from Pakistanis (in Pakistan and elsewhere) for people to understand the facts instead of having it be yet another go-round about “backwardness” or similar.
What’s most frustrating is that basically the only way we have to influence foreign policy is presidential elections, but presidential candidates barely discuss foreign policy! Remember the Obama-Romney debate that was supposed to be all about foreign policy but really they just briefly touched on like three high-profile countries and then weaseled their way back into arguing about the economy? There’s actually not much the president can do about the economy, but he can clearly do a shitload about Pakistan. But we didn’t have the chance to know what we were getting.
This is a top-drawer Link Round-Up (even though most of the links make me sad and/or angry). Excellent work, Mallory!
And of course my hearty congratulations to Nicole on the birth of her masculine child.
Final “Colbert Report” tonight. Final “Colbert Report” tonight.
Speaking of, did you all catch this the other night because, oh my god, Kendrick Lamar. Just stunning.
This was INCREDIBLE. I loved the song and I love Kendrick and I want to marry him the end
We were riveted.
Such a good song.
Mallory, thanks for mentioning that asshole Leigh Anne Tuohy and that complete and utter shit she pulled on those kids, PS., hey, Leigh Anne Tuohy, FUCK YOU, AND FUCK ALL OF YOU JACKWAGON PIECES OF TRASH WHO THOUGHT THIS WAS A GOOD STORY, ON ANY FUCKING LEVEL.
I don’t want to imagine how she asked them to take a picture with her. Bet it didn’t involve telling them “…and then I’m going to share it on all my social media platforms so all my followers can pat me on the back for interacting with you!”
That picture is the worst. I love how her caption claims they were “all smiles” when they left. It doesn’t take someone with an advanced degree in body language to take a look at that photo and see two extremely strained smiles on two very very uncomfortable people.
As usual, don’t read the comments unless you’re interested in a heaping helping of “This is just race baiting!!!” “Who is so obsessed with race anymore, it’s 2014!” “I am white so you’ll tell me I don’t understand but come on a couple of loitering teens look like trouble” [as if teens of every colour do not sit in restaurants and talk to each other everywhere in every country on planet earth] “You’re just too blind to see her doing a good thing” and so on.
Wow, 9:30 am and I am already depressed at the world.
I was already feeling tired and weepy from insomnia and overwork and now I’m just about ready to quit everything. I need a blanket fort and a hot toddy.
I read that as “a hot teddy” and I was like well, Ethyl, whatever floats your boat, but I was wondering if it was a hot-teddy-bear or a sexy piece of lingerie for the blanket fort.
I should do some work.
MAYBE IT’S BOTH
Hot teddy:
http://www.amazon.com/Warm-Tradition-TEDDY-Water-…
can I come hide in the blanket fort, too, blanket fort sounds good right now
All misandrists are welcome! Our hot toddies will be full of male tears!
I have lots of cinnamon sticks and fleece, I’ll be right over.
Can I join? Some gifted me home-made Baileys that I would happily share with the group.
Home-made Bailey’s??? Tell me more!
I know! Our office manager made it for all the “young ladies” in the office, which is just so stupid and adorable. It smells delicious – I think she used this http://www.yummymummyclub.ca/blogs/maija-moments-… but with Tim Horton’s products instead of Starbucks.
Joining y’all in the blanket fort, I got a stack of old comic books and a big pot of hot tea (milk, lemon, or whisky?) to share.
Events in the world and my personal life this past week have turned my heart into a cold, painful lump, you guys. It does get better, right?
Oh god I started reading the comments and was immediately like, ‘Abort, abort! This is not The Toast! No one named Cliffe or Ortberg was involved in moderating these comments. No one was involved in moderating these comments at all. Ahhhhh why would anyone say any of this?!’
The Toast’s comments have made me a sheltered, tender little thing, not fit for the rough and tumble unmitigated horror of the rest of the Internet’s comment sections.
PREACH. But it’s how it fucking should be!! I think of the Toast comment sections as like being at your really good friend’s hen’s party – it’s a bunch of ladies you don’t necessarily know that well but they’re friends with your friend so they must be great with interesting things to say, right? So everyone’s polite and respectful and having a great time by the end and isn’t this nice!
WHY DID I READ THEM. So much, “I mean, everyone gets nervous when they see teenagers loitering or just hanging out!” This was the same excuse used when an NYPD cop car literally chased a couple of teenagers out of Park Slope, telling them to ‘get out of the neighborhood”. TEENAGERS ARE ALLOWED TO EXIST. It’s like unless you can see that they are working on a science project all teenagers (and of course especially black teenagers) are assumed to be criminals and that’s just a normal thing to people. UGH UGH UGH BLANKET FORT O’CLOCK.
Ugh, yes. One of the McDonalds in my home town was near the sidewalk hangout spot for bored high school students so they installed a “teenager repellent” machine outside the building. If you’ve never had the misfortune to hear about it, it makes a loud, annoying, very high pitched whine. It’s too high pitched for most adults to hear, but children and teenagers can. I’m so mad that such a thing even exists, let alone that it’s permitted to use it to prevent teenagers from using public space in the goddamn middle of downtown because someone doesn’t want to have to look at them while buying shitty fast food.
There’s one of those that does a clicking sound outside the Florida Theatre in Jacksonville to repel vagrants, I guess? since teens don’t really hang out downtown? and it is the worst and I hate arriving at the Theatre early or waiting for my ride to pull up or walking past it because the five minutes it takes to get away from it makes me super sick, plus stressed. And I’m definitely not a teenager – I’m 30!
I hate them so much. There’s a park across the street, next to a great bar, and it’s not even particularly enjoyable to sit out there to get air or enjoy the park because the Mosquito thing is so loud.
There is a grocery store in my town that uses one of these and it’s AWFUL. I’m 26 and any time I have to go near it, it makes me feel nauseous and off-balance, not to mention how audibly annoying it is. I can’t imagine it’s helped their business any.
Yeah, I haven’t been near there in a couple of years, but as of a few years ago when I was in my late 20s I could still hear it from across the street and down the block. Perhaps unsurprisingly, there’s a pretty distinct difference between men’s and women’s ability to hear high pitched noises, with women hearing them much better. That probably means there are a lot more women getting chased out of public spaces by these things than men.
A restaurant that caters to children (meals that come with toys!) and, at least prior to the recession, employed many teens runs child/youth repelling machines?! There isn’t enough logic in the universe to even try to rationalize that bigotry.
Yeah I started reading the comments before I realized I wasn’t on the toast. WTF.
I read that Belle Jar piece the other day and pretty much had to spend five minutes doing nothing but focusing on not smacking my head into my desk until I passed out.
What level of delusional thinking does it take to frame ‘Some other white lady made a racist assumption, but I showed her what’s what… by walking over and demanding two kids account for themselves for having the gall to sit quietly in my restaurant (which I made sure they knew I owned, haha no way that was tacitly threatening)’ as her being the good non-racist white person. Jackass, you’re the one who made sure they knew they didn’t belong, that they had to be able to justify merely existing in your presence.
I think the thing that grates on me the most is this godawful person has undoubtedly made huge sums of money off selling this Christian charity inspired white savior narrative. I guess the feel-good racism industry can be pretty lucrative.
This Interview business is only going to make James Franco smugger.
Hmm, you think so? I don’t think I know him well enough to say how he’ll react, but with the news that Sony has no plans to release the movie on DVD or VOD, even (so what, is leaked versions via piracy the only remaining option?) — I can’t imagine he or Seth Rogen are in any way happy, after all they put into the movie. (I take gleeful schadenfreude in these situations, when rich white boys take a tumble. I want to see their sad faces. I want to know how they’re coping.)
My tin foil hat and I have decided Franco and Rogan faked N Korea’s involvement in the Sony hack, as well as the related threats. Either they realized how bad the movie was or they’ve got a strange-but-serious stake in DVD sales only. No one correct me!!
Oh my god the Year in Garbage was… and it didn’t even get to the Peshawar killings… I need a strong cup of coffee and the rest of the day off, and it’s not even 10. Matt’s (looks like Matt’s style?) “men in garbage cans” drawings were quite nice, though.
A-greed. Man, I need to have several very strong drinks now, and it’s not even 10.
I’m totally thread-jacking because SERIAL SERIAL SERIAL. Let’s discuss!
I am SO AMAZED that there are people out there who are disappointed that we didn’t get a clear, irrefutable guilty/innocent verdict. What about ANY of this podcast made people think Sarah Koenig knew the answer and we would get to hear it at the end?
In any case I thought the ending was great. It recapped the major points, it talked about new evidence, it spoke of the possibility of never-touched DNA evidence finally getting tested, it spoke about possible alternatives to Adnan, but I am beyond pleased that Koenig did not try to weasel an answer out of this where she did not have one, and instead chose to just be honest with us and say “You know what, I don’t know for sure, and I would not swear one way or the other.”
The only thing I wish we’d gotten more of is a deeper look into the police officers involved, like the blog recently linked in one of these round-ups (I think Thursday last week) discussed the discrepancies in Jay’s testimonies hinted toward coersion/pressure to say what the cops wanted him to say. There was some shady police involvement there for sure, and Koenig even touched momentarily on police pressure to testimonies in this final episode, but I feel like she skirted the “question the police officers” topic every time she came near it.
Can’t wait for season 2!
I agree with pretty much everything and I definitely don’t understand the people who are disappointed that things weren’t “solved.”
I thought this was a really good op-ed on WaPo about Serial’s missed opportunities in relation to the justice system. Like, I would definitely listen to a bonus episode of that lady, Jim Trainum, and Deirdre sitting at a table talking about how screwed your average person is within the realms of what is deemed “acceptable” by the justice system.
Because THAT’S the thing that’s just such a kick in the teeth: that none of what was going on was conspiratorial or out of the realm of what’s considered okay, even if it seemed (to me as a layperson) shady as hell.
Really liked the final episode a lot more than the previous two (felt like those lost steam/direction a bit) and found it quite moving in places. Adnan saying that nothing in his case scared him was one of those moments.
I MAY have gasped a little when Sarah said she’d just recently talked to Don. To me: the prosecutor’s behavior is the biggest “reveal” in the episode. If he’s yelling at Don (twice!) for not making Adnan seem creepy enough I can only imagine what sorts of things he’s saying to Jay behind the scenes.
Also I would like to officially petition Serial to let Dana talk more often in the second season because she’s hilarious. Still love Deirdre.
The heartiest of Mazel Tovs to Nicole and her attendant Cliffes!
It’s difficult to absorb that everything that happened in the Year of Garbage was actually this year. It feels so much longer.
(I love the drawing of bright-eyed Wolf Blitzer dressed as Sherlock Holmes. And this is my favorite line: “Robin Williams and Philip Seymor Hoffman died because this year, this refuse pile of 365 days known as 2014, took them from us.” Also the drawing of the elephant mauling a donkey.)
it’s Slate, so some of the decriptions of the outrage are annoying, but this is pretty well done anyways, http://www.slate.com/articles/life/culturebox/201…
For instance, I had completely forgotten about David Brooks on Jan. 2 writing about smoking pot and why we should lock up black people cause of it.
Hurrah and mazel tov, Nicole!!!!!! That is splendid news! (Also a not-insignificant number of my favorite people were born in mid-December so I’m just saying this bodes well.)
I read the Year in Garbage, and I have to say I flinched at the throwaway that India elected “a racist asshole.” Although the BJP gives me serious side-eye, I feel like the situation is much, much more nuanced than that. It’s pretty annoying to see it outlined in such a smug tone. Also, he doesn’t wear a turban, jeez.
I don’t have time to rant more (I’m going to India today! Which apparently the Nib thinks is full of racist assholes! Haha!) but I wanted to point that out.
Thank you. There are ways of objecting to a-holes without being a different kind of a-hole while you’re doing it.
Yeah, that took me aback too. I mean, the whole thing is done in a very cavalier style (“also dead people”), but I’m surprised they feel so confident making that particular assertion.
Not to comment on the other points, but if you do a Google image search of Modi there are a lot of him wearing turbans! It was probably based off this http://www.sikhsiyasat.net/wp-content/uploads/Nar…
Thanks, Jaya! This makes so much more sense.
p.s. Do the comment sections look different than they used to for anyone else? (For instance, no more like/thumbs up button, no edit function.) Has this already been explained and I missed it? Or is it just me and my browser (Firefox)?
I think it’s a Firefox problem; I had to switch over to *sigh* IE (because IntenseDebate refuses to let me log in in Chrome).
I see comments fine in Firefox.
Everything looks fine for me, but now it’s only a matter of time before I start experiencing these problems, too, because I have that sort of relationship with technology.
I’m having this problem on Firefox on the Windows machine I use, but not on IE. It’s fine on all browsers on my Mac.
I had the same problem until I turned off Adblock.
*sigh* Guess I’ll have to block all the videos manually.
I’ve had no trouble with AdBlock Edge, if you want to try it. I have it turned off on The Toast except somehow I still don’t see video ads? so.
(edit: it could be that I don’t see video ads because there’s something fucked up with my Flash Player. it keeps insisting i need to update it, but when i go to the update page, i have the latest version. probably something to do with this being an XP machine locked down by work’s ITS…)
I’m having this problem, I’m using Chrome and Adblock (sorry, The Toast, I use it for everyone).
I try to disable it for sites I want to support, but letting the ads run makes The Toast load SO slowly and also sort of freezes the tab periodically.
Surely something can be done about this, at some point? I want to give The Toast ad revenue! I just want to not crash Chrome doing it!
I think you can selectively block certain ad areas (like the area that plays the video ad, for example) but I’m not 100% sure how – I also kept Adblock off on the toast for a long time but about a month or so ago the site started slowing down my browser a lot, and the video ads kept expanding somehow and blocking the toasty goodness. I much prefer the simple banner ads, but I imagine they don’t bring in as much money.
(PS. if you’re having a commenting issue like the others, I posted a bit upthread on how to keep ABP on, but enable the comments)
(PPS. That cat fleece blanket thing sounds like the cutest thing in the world. I very much enjoy how cats in general can be so aloof 90% of the time, and then do the dumbest stuff the other 10% (like when they start cleaning themselves on a windowsill and then fall off, for example. Which my cat never does. obviously.).
For me it was an Adblock problem: turning off Adblock has returned comments to their natural glorious state.
Edited my original comment to make it a bit clearer:
– If you’re using Adblock Plus, you can click its little icon (mine is to the right of the URL bar) and select ‘open blockable items’.
– Then in the search bar of the little panel that appears, look for ‘debate’ or ‘intensedebate’ and you should see two scripts that are blocked (there’s a column called ‘type’, if you sort by that, you can just skip to the ‘scripts’ part of your search results). There will be a lot of results overall, but these two scripts should have a red x next to them, to show that they’re being blocked.
– If you click on the little red x next to the script names, then reload the page, the comments should come back as normal.
I think ABP may have had an update recently that added those scripts to its filters – I had the same problem yesterday and that’s how I fixed it.
On a happy note….I don’t know about the US doodle, but Google Canada’s Google doodle today is to commemorate Henrietta Edwards’ 165th birthday, who was one of the Famous Five, women who argued before Parliament that women should be considered persons before the law, and it was illustrated by the amazing goddesslike Kate Beaton. http://www.google.com/doodles/henrietta-edwards-1… She is commemorated with a statue on Parliament Hill.
I’m running on ~3 hours of sleep and working on finishing my last goddamn final paper of this goddamn semester, and that made me well up something fierce, sooooooo thank you? I guess is where I’m going with this?
Good job! You can do it! You’re almost done!
SOB THANK YOU. TEN PAGES BETWEEN ME AND FREEDOM. IT CAN AND SHALL BE DONE.
Today in good news (which I think we could all use)– LADY BOB SLED BADASS COMPETING AGAINST MEN IN THE WORLD CUP
http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2014/dec/18/elan…
She’s also in the Rugby Olympic trials? Some people are just so much better than me.
Also, the article mentions (but doesn’t show) Kaillie Humphries, a Canadian bobsledder who is amazing. She’s a delight on social media, rocks that whole half-shaved head thing and is just awesome. She also advocates strongly for women to be seen as tough, competitive athletes.
Wasn’t last year really awful, too? I remember being really happy when 2013 was over.
2012 too. I feel like everyone lets out a big sigh of relief at the end of each year like “Welp, it probably couldn’t be worse than that!”
And then, you know, more garbage.
I think it’s 24-hour global news cycles allowing us to learn of every horrible thing that happens in the world instantly. It feels like constant garbage.
And then it’s like an echo chamber of garbage, as other shows and the internet talk about how badly the garbage is being reported and WHAT DOES IT MEAN and who has a chance of changing anything, what we should do about it, on and on and on…
Not saying we *shouldn’t* talk about what’s happening, of course — just musing on why it feels so never-ending and soul-draining.
I think it’s sort of a sign of progress that we hear about all the bad stuff, actually. How many police shootings or massacres in distant nations did we hear about before twitter? Those things were always happening, but now we have the means to make an outcry about it.
I thought Neil deGrasse Tyson put it really well here: https://twitter.com/neiltyson/status/537746866411…
“Times Have Changed: Officer kills an unarmed Black man, spawning National protests. When I grew up, this was just local news.”
Cold comfort to the families of Michael Brown, John Crawford, Eric Garner, and others, but it does seem like the connections being drawn between these police murders and the protests are moving us closer to a world in which police murder of people of color is not considered business as usual.
Ouch.
I think it’s kind of a tough balance. It is definitely good that we’re hearing about things that would have been shushed up in the past, but social media can mean that we’re just constantly exposed to violent and terrible images and things all the time, and according to my therapist that may be bad for my mental health. It’s tough when you want to engage with the world but also want to take care of yourself, and the place where I go to see cute baby pictures is also the place where I see awful things that I may not be prepared for in that moment. As someone who jumps really quickly from “many things are terrible” to “our entire existence in this universe is terrible”, I at least need to figure out a better way to engage.
Regarding The Interview: there’s some buzz indicating it’ll be released as VOD, which would make a lot of sense for them financially.
Hmm, when’d you hear that? Because the latest articles I saw (from six hours ago: http://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/dec/18/fbi-n… say that might not even happen.
Oh, I was seeing the news go around last night. It seems like the news on this whole situation changes every few hours.
Rumors of rumors flitting around the Hollywood grape vine…
Given how much things have been hacked already, I am guessing somebody who got a screener of it will eventually upload it on a Torrent site before Christmas.
that won’t give the filmmakers their investment back though 🙁
Well, the filmmakers don’t seem to be providing a way to let people legally buy it. And it was their risk. I’m astounded that they let it get this far, millions of dollars in, and weren’t prepared for this kind of response from North Korea. Especially since they didn’t even change the dictator’s *name*.
So true… I saw the trailer for the first time yesterday, and it went like “LET’S GO KILL KIM JONG UN” my mouth fell open. Really, guys? Really. Who thought this was okay?
My point was, if people want to support free speech or whatever, I’m not sure it counts if you don’t actually pay for the movie.
That’s the “free” part:)
touche…
This is probably not the place for this and I apologize. 🙁 Is anyone else having issues getting the IntenseDebate comment system to load properly in Chrome? I tried Googling it but apparently it’s too early in the morning and there are too few cups of tea in my system.
I’m doing okay with it in Chrome but it won’t load for me in Firefox anymore–I get the isolated boxes of comments with no visible upvote score.
Oh, weird! The exact opposite thing is happening for me. Looks fine in Firefox, but I get isolated boxes in Chrome.
Said this upthread but IntenseDebate won’t work at all in Firefox and it displays correctly but won’t let me log in with Chrome. IE is the only browser that KINDA works, though if I type too fast, letters don’t show up.
Me too, and I can’t log in.
Yep, same here.
Ugh, things are starting to get iffy in Chrome, too. It’s not letting me respond to someone who replied to me.
I’ve only got it working in Firefox, chrome won’t display properly, or let me log in.
ETA: I switched the-toast.net from “non-intrusive advertising” to completely whitelisted, and intensedebate is working again in chrome. Try whitelisting The Toast and you should be ok.
Oooooooh maybe it is adblocker. Will try it, thanks!
ETA: Worked like a charm. THANKS!
I turned off Adblock while using Chrome and the comment system started loading properly for me again.
It’s fine in Opera. That’s probably not very helpful, though.
Just copying what I wrote in another comment thread in case it helps:
– If you’re using Adblock Plus, you can click its little icon (mine is to the right of the URL bar) and select ‘open blockable items’.
– Then in the search bar of the little panel that appears, look for ‘debate’ or ‘intensedebate’ and you should see two scripts that are blocked (there’s a column called ‘type’, if you sort by that, you can just skip to the ‘scripts’ part of your search results). There will be a lot of results overall, but these two scripts should have a red x next to them, to show that they’re being blocked.
– If you click on the little red x next to the script names, then reload the page, the comments should come back as normal.
I think ABP may have had an update recently that added those scripts to its filters – I had the same problem yesterday and that’s how I fixed it.
Hooray for the new Progeny! Many Congratulatory Sentiments to Nicole. Our Joy (if I may speak for other Toastrons) is only exceeded by the Elation with which we anticipate your Return.
Meanwhile, get lots of rest and be well!
Congratulations, Nicole! Raise a glass to Toastbaby.
This is the best link I’ve seen today: http://www.rte.ie/archives/exhibitions/922-christ…
It is the funniest video I’ve ever seen, via an Irish TV curator archivist friend. “It doesn’t matter what you put in there…. this is the lousiest turkey I’ve ever seen.”
In the same place, with the cold, painful cardiac condition. Just pushing through because I can remember that does get better, even if it takes its sweet time doing so.
And a blanket fort sounds magnificent right now. I should build one tonight to share with my familiars.
Many congratulations to Nicole and all the Cliffes!
ditto!
A lady at work brought in Hanukkah donuts for everyone. I don’t celebrate so I can’t say for certain, but I don’t think Hanukkah donuts are a thing. No complaints from me, though.
I was at my favorite bagel shop this morning and they had Hanukkah donuts for sale, so labeled and everything. If it wasn’t a thing before, I hope the world is making it that.
They are, though. I think oily foods in general. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sufganiyah
Oh cool! She brought in a dozen assorted from Dunkin’ Donuts so I thought it was just a nice excuse to spread some holiday/Hanukkah cheer. I learned a thing today!
I celebrate, and I’ve never heard of such a thing, but I’m certainly eager to incorporate them into my own practice.
Latkes, gelt. That’s about it, as far as our food tradition. Oh, and this year I found some festive white-chocolate dipped oreos with blue sprinkles, and I’m even letting my son eat most of them.
fried things! I love letting Jewish friends feed me, well ever, but especially at Hannukah.
just joining in to say that sufganiyot are amazing. they’re an 8th night tradition for my family and i cannot wait to eat them this year…
Franco seems like he’s already planning out a statement about how this movie was really a pointed satire aimed at freeing the North Koreans from the tyranny of Kim Jong Un, and the fact that it’s been pulled just proves that he’s doing important work that The Man doesn’t want you to see. You haven’t worked to destabilize Kim Jong Un, Korean activists; James Franco has. Aren’t you all grateful for James Franco? Let’s all put our hands together for James Franco.
Another reason why we haven’t gone back to the Moon is because lunar dust DESTROYS EVERYTHING.
I was looking forward to a mini Freaks & Geeks reunion & Lizzy Caplan deserves to have a hit that’s not a great TV series.
So I am not for capitulating to terrorist demands, and I haven’t been following this whole thing super-duper closely, but my first reaction to hearing the plot of the Interview was “seriously?” It just seems super tasteless to me to make a comedy movie about an actual terrible violent dictator that currently exists. I kiiiiinda felt the same way when 30 Rock had that whole North Korea plot line, not that it stopped me from watching it.
“Weather Report: Everything Sunny All The Time Always!” is still my favorite 30 Rock cutaway joke.
Yeahhhh. I realize that it is hypocritical of me to feel this way about the Interview when “And in food news, you’ve had enough to eat today!” is still one of my favorite jokes of all time.
Sort of on-topic though, I was rewatching 30 Rock lately and I realized that there’s a joke about Pete having sex with his sleeping wife (and showing it) that is really a not-at-all-funny rape joke and it made me sad.
Shakesville has some commentary up about this very thing today: http://www.shakesville.com/2014/12/the-interview-…
“Zoolander” plot was on the multinational clothing industry plotting to have the Prime Minister of Malaysia assassinated for raising wages for the country’s sweatshop workers. It was the first movie I saw post-9/11, just wanted something to distract me from the news. Screenwriting teaches that one should raise the stakes to keep the plot moving. Even though Zoolander saves him in the end, it was still not a plot device I enjoyed. Drake Sather was a brilliant writer, but I’d rather of seen the PM threatened with a tickle fight.
Congratulations to Nicole! And now I’m off to read the Year in Garbage post.
Pardon my open-thread-ness, but I just found out i have xmas eve off!! So I was going to go to a museum downtown and THEY ARE OPEN ON XMAS EVE OH MY GOD I AM SO HAPPY
Oh but guess what, they are closed on Wednesdays. WEDNESDAYS. But open on xmas eve. God damn you, museums downtown.
I mean there’s the Getty but that’s like 3 hours on public transit.
*weeping*
Are you sure they’re not specially open that day, if their website or whatever said “open Christmas Eve”? Some museums in my area are closed on Mondays but open on Monday holidays like Memorial Day.
the website didn’t say “open xmas eve”, it just failed to list the day among their closed days 🙁
They are totally a thing! Sufganiyot, or jelly doughnuts, are a Sephardi tradition (Jews from Spain/the Mediterranean) and latkes, the potato pancakes, are an Ashkenazi thing (Jews from Eastern Europe). The vast majority of Jews in the US are Ashkenazi, so Sephardi traditions aren’t as well-known.
(I am Ashkenazi and I married a Sephardi, which means there are a wide variety of minor traditional differences but really boils down to: RICE ON PASSOVER, HELL YES.)
edit: supposed to be a reply to @hearyoume
my mom is a tunisian jew, and i might be biased, but sephardi holiday food is SO GOOD. bring on the pickled lemons and bourekas and the insanely thick charoset!
haven’t had pickled lemons (though sounds delicious) but mmm, bourekas.
MALLORY. I hope someday to be so blasé about my successes I don’t bother to mention that my piece was just published in the New Yorker.
whaaaaaaaaaaaat
ETA: it’s so great. Of course Ayn Rand loves the little mermaid.
IT’S SO GOOD
To be fair, I always thought that about Grandpa Joe as well.
The Ice Bucket Challenge was garbage? I thought they made something like 100 million: http://www.ibtimes.com/how-much-money-has-als-ice…
Yep. That one bothered me, too. Say what you want about the Ice Bucket Challenge’s long-term impacts or the world of annoyance it piled on fundraising staff at other organizations, but it raised a crap-ton of money for that cause, and I don’t really see what’s so bad about that. Even if it didn’t raise all that money, ALS isn’t a cause that’s exactly awash in awareness. Hell, I’m a pretty plugged-in individual who works in the nonprofit sector, and I really couldn’t have told you much about ALS or the ALS Association prior to the challenge.
Also, it inspired an SLJ racism challenge.
Mallory, I watched Your Highness unapologetically. it was tripe and I enjoyed it.
My mum is obsessed with that movie – she has made each member of my family watch it on separate occasions, and as she watched it with each of us, she’s seen it I think four times in all.
I loved it as well.
This Is The End was a fantastic movie and I challenge anybody who says differently to a Backstreet Boys dance-off.
well, if you want it that way…
Michael Cera is brilliant in that.
The part where they all get blazed and make an on-the-fly sequel to Pineapple Express made me laugh far harder than I care to admit.
The scene with the unauthorized use of James Franco’s porn mag made me laugh so hard I honestly thought I would throw up.
I’m clearly getting old, as my reaction to groups of teenagers is usually “aren’t you just adorable.” So that’s kind of patronizing, but not terribly dangerous.
Oh man same. This morning there was a group of them on the subway on a field trip that had gotten separated from their teacher and they were SO EXCITED and they were baby hipster teens. I was standing next to this skinny kid in hipster glasses, remnants of nail polish and the word “skateboarding” written in magic marker on his hand. I just wanted to hug them all and make them mixtapes with lots of Smiths and Superchunk on them.
And they think they’re so cool! ADORABLE.
my brother tried to get that ringtone when we were in high school but he couldn't download it, so he tried to make a RECORDING of it, which played about an octave lower and STILL the most AWFUL sound.
but I feel like as a ringtone it has a major drawback 'cause if your phone goes off in class and every teen in the room is suddenly hearing a noise, is that not going to be obvious to an adult who CAN'T hear the noise? in what way is this better than setting your phone to vibrate? it's still a painful noise as a ringtone, at least everyone in the room doesn't wince when someone's phone vibrates.
I try to disable it for sites I want to support, but letting the ads run makes The Toast load SO slowly and also sort of freezes the tab periodically.
Surely something can be done about this, at some point? I want to give The Toast ad revenue! I just want to not crash Chrome doing it!
here is a delightful thing
one of my cats has been dragging a rolled-up fleece blanket around the room, back and forth. She stands over it, picks up the end in her mouth, and then waddles around dragging it under her belly. She looks so purposeful! I have no idea why she does this and I hope she never stops because it’s the BEST cutest thing.
here is a delightful thing
one of my cats has been dragging a rolled-up fleece blanket around the room, back and forth. She stands over it, picks up the end in her mouth, and then waddles around dragging it under her belly. She looks so purposeful! I have no idea why she does this and I hope she never stops because it's the BEST cutest thing.
SIGNIFICANTLY better than Ashkenazi holiday food, for the most part. I may have made schnitzel last night, but bet your behind I'm making leek fritters and spanekh b'jibn and stuffed grape leaves in tamarind sauce come holiday time.
Rice and beans and chickpeas on Pesach, sigh.
To be fair, I always thought that about Grandpa Joe as well.
Thanks, Jaya! This makes so much more sense.