Her face is very squishy and soft, can you tell how it would feel to futz her fur? Reflect on it briefly.
Caity Weaver. Profiled. Justin. Bieber. And. It. Was. So. Good:
The chicken-finger platter that has just been placed before Justin Bieber is like something out of a children’s book—an illustration from a story about a boy who becomes king, whose first and last royal decree is that it’s chicken-finger time. The dish is so massive that in order to accommodate it, a metal urn filled with enough ice and soft drinks to sustain a pioneer family on a trek across Death Valley is moved to an adjacent table. Tenders are not even listed on the menu of this restaurant; its offerings are confined to ideas like “parsnip purée,” “pomegranate gastrique,” and “dill.” The fingers have been conjured, unbidden, out of the invisible fabric of the universe for Justin Bieber, who is not eating them.
How Matt became Mr. Jaya Saxena (inhales, “D’AWWWWWWW):
In the first AOL instant message I got from my husband, he asked if I was okay. Back then he wasn’t my husband; he was just a boy from camp.
I’d estimate it was around 4pm on September 11, 2001 and I lived in Manhattan. I had just returned to my dad’s house uptown after walking home from my high school downtown, and my instinct was to hog the phone line so I could sign on toAOL. Matt and I hadn’t talked since the last day of camp, where we had met that summer, but a mutual friend informed me that he had a crush on me a few days before. I was intrigued, but admittedly more excited about another camp boy who IMed me shortly after Matt did. It turns out that the other camp boy and I didn’t chat much after that, but Matt and I kept talking. He is now my husband.
I mean, obviously you’re going to read this:
Decades before women won the right to vote, Victoria Woodhull ran for president, started her own newspaper, and became one of America’s first female stockbrokers. She also found time to advocate for free love and talk to ghosts.
Well, THIS is cool beans:
A team of physicists who can now count themselves as astronomers announced on Thursday that they had heard and recorded the sound of two black holes colliding a billion light-years away, a fleeting chirp that fulfilled the last prophecy of Einstein’s general theory of relativity.
That faint rising tone, physicists say, is the first direct evidence of gravitational waves, the ripples in the fabric of space-time that Einstein predicted a century ago. And it is a ringing (pun intended) confirmation of the nature of black holes, the bottomless gravitational pits from which not even light can escape, which were the most foreboding (and unwelcome) part of his theory.
More generally, it means that scientists have finally tapped into the deepest register of physical reality, where the weirdest and wildest implications of Einstein’s universe become manifest.
*
Closing the gender gap in medical research:
In 2004, Dr. Shari Munch published a paper on gender-biased diagnosing, or what she refers to as “a tendency for physicians and other health-care professionals to mislabel women’s somatic complaints as non-serious and/or psychosomatic.” Munch became interested in this dispiriting trend while working as a hospital social worker. During this time, she noticed that when women came into the hospital displaying symptoms of hyperemesis gravidarum (HG)—severe nausea and vomiting during pregnancy—doctors often implied that what they were experiencing might be stress-related. “It became kind of this theme,” Munch says. And it was a theme she began to research. Her resulting paper recounted the long history of women doubting their own sanity, particularly when it comes to their health, and also foregrounded feminist literature that was starting to bring this problem to light.
*
I find it wildly stressful to read articles that think seriously about how we spend too much time on our devices so here’s the link.
*
I watched this video of getting a basketball to the testicles more times than strictly necessary (TEAM GRATEFUL FOR INTERNAL GENITALIA FOR LYFE):
Russell went down immediately, almost like when Ivan Drago murdered Apollo Creed, but the game played on for a few seconds before the Lakers had to call a timeout to check on him. He would eventually be okay, and finished the game with 15 points in 28 minutes of play. He was fine after the game, only saying that “it was tough,” but he was also able to laugh about it.
*
(weeps):
Eagles co-founder Bernie Leadon and singer-songwriter Jackson Browne will join members Don Henley, Joe Walsh and Timothy B. Schmit for a Grammy tribute honoring Glenn Frey, the Eagles singer-guitarist who died January 18th at age 67. As Billboard reports, it’s likely the performance will include “Take It Easy,” the band’s seminal 1972 folk-rock anthem, which Browne co-wrote with Frey.
Matt and Jaya <3
They are MARRIED??!
Haven’t read the articles yet, but speaking of Victoria Woodhull, has anyone else read Sex Wars? A really great, informative historical fiction novel!
I am here all day for Marge Piercy, and that is a fantastic novel.
Oooh thank you for the tip! I read Scarlet Sisters about Victoria and her sister (who was more well-known at the time) and it was FASCINATING. I would love even more, though hard to believe the history, the fiction is going to be all that more delicious!
How have I never heard of Victoria Woodhull before? (Well, I know how, but still!)
Right?!? I read a biography about her while researching Spiritualism, and my God, is she a fascinating human!
I realized yesterday, in the discussions about the Ghomeshi trial, that somewhere in my parents’ house, there’s a picture of me with him from about 20 years ago, from after a Moxy Früvous concert I went to as a kid.
I had forgotten I’d met him. It added a new chill in a weird way. And it got me thinking about who the second-worst person is with whom I’ve taken a picture.
My worst is Mike Huckabee. *shudder*
There’s a picture of me with John McCain, but it was taken back when he was still presenting himself as the reasonable moderate, so maybe it’s not so bad?
There’s a picture of my brothers and I with Sean Hannity. Ughhhhhh.
OH HOW COULD I FORGET that I also have a picture where John Edwards has him arm around my shoulder. I was a big supporter at the time. Elizabeth even gave a stump speech at the rally I attended. Ugh.
As a former Edwards supporter I commiserate.
Me too…
Yeah…although Jian was presenting himself as “not a rapist,” so I think you’re where I am.
Ehh, but it’s not like McCain was secretly casting radical Senate votes while pretending to be a moderate, right?
That’s a pretty complicated question I guess. But with a politician, at least the stuff you judge them on is generally public record?
same. I was wearing a baseball cap when I met the band, and one of them called me “little boy.”
There is a picture out there of Ghomeshi holding Copeland’s book “Worst. Person. Ever” out there. I look at it occasionally. It makes me feel better about life.
O look, here’s a whole Twitter feed devoted to it! https://twitter.com/cdnwritersgroup/status/528343…
I imagine that this is how it felt to be one of those kittens used for photo-ops with Harper.
Those poor kitties. 🙁
That gave birth to a really great Twitter feed for a while, tho.
My Worst People in childhood photos are 1) Douglas Wilson and 2) Ken Ham.
*shudders*
My worst is with Rick Santorum, from when he was a senator. It’s hilariously awful.
Urgh Jerry Springer. To my credit I look disgusted with him.
Trigger warning: clergy sex abuse
My mom informed me about two years ago that the priest in the photos holding me as I was baptized was accused, not long after, of abusing boys in our parish, including the son of one of my mother’s very best friends in the world. I have no memory of it but it gives me just the worst feeling in the world to think of.
The Toast, help, the Hamilton soundtrack is on Google Play for 99 cents so of course I bought it and I listened to some of it (for the first time) on my way in to work and now I’m at work and I have to stop listening to it for now because I can’t take in the story and do work at the same time and
HELP
Would you say you’re
[Eliza] Helpless
?
judging by the fact that that song in particular won’t leave my head as I consider my plight, yes, yes I would
It’s only natural, you see, because ev’ry action has its equal opposite reaction.
You’ll never be satisfied.
Ah! I envy you, getting to listen for the first time!
I would advise that you do not listen past “We Know” if you are in a public place and need to function like a normal human.
Also be aware that at some point it’s likely you’ll find yourself running down the street hollering HERCULES MULLIGAN. No judgement.
Good to know where it gets dangerous! Thank you!
Always.
Or popping into a room and declaring “Everyone give it up for America’s favorite fighting Frenchman!”
I wish I were self-confident enough to actually do this someday.
Well I don’t do it, like, at work. Just where people will get it.
Well, that would be just weird. I meant at a party or so.
FYI at work I am on a committee that is negotiating a contract (long, non-germane story) and I have every intention of coming to our next meeting with a sign to hang out the outside of the door that says “The Room Where It Happens.” (No one will get it, so I’m safe.)
My work IM status message has been “I am the one thing in life I can control” for months, and no one has commented on it. 🙁
Someone will eventually, right? You just have to ….. (you know what line goes there)
I love that I work at a theater full of theaterdorks and people actually do this all the time. #blessed
LAFAYETTE
I’m reading Sarah Vowell’s new book right now so I go around screaming LAFAYETTE pretty much constantly.
i JUST started reading it! Tiny bb Lafayette is so charming.
I often feel the urge to say “Who’s the best? C’est moi.” on a regular basis.
Someone on tumblr once played Guns and Ships to a speech-to-text program and it understood that line as:
“everyone give it up for America’s favorite fat infringement”
And now I ALWAYS THINK OF THAT
Misheard Hamilton lyrics amuse me way more than they probably should!
I AM NOT THROWING AWAY MY SOCKS
Hahahahaha you’re so screwed. Welcome to the club.
WELCOME TO HELL
You need to say no to this.
I literally bought it last weekend and haven’t listened to it yet because I feel like I need to set aside time and be emotionally ready?
Good idea! Also have the lyrics nearby because the experience will be even better if you know for sure what they’re singing.
This is what I’m talking about!
and WHO is singing.
Best source for lyrics is Genius, which has mucho annotations as well: http://genius.com/Lin-manuel-miranda-alexander-ha…
Oh this is awesome. The cds were my xmas present to myself and YAY to now also having it on google play. Thanks, toastie who mentioned it!!
Also, I too was also reading Sarah Vowell’s book whilst becoming obsessed, but I was trying to rush through several kindle library loans at once and therefore missed a lot, so I have it on hold again, but it was superfun to do the two at the same time.
No, no, be like me. “Well, Nicole said it was good and now it’s streaming for free, so I guess I’ll listen at work, but I don’t think I’ll like it.”
I know I’ll like it! I mean, the clips I’ve seen already make me cry.
Don’t worry, it’s ok. People actually smile at you when you’re in public, waiting for the subway, dancing by yourself! It’s cute and adorable! Except for when you accidentally sing out loud “and I’ll kill your friends and family / to remind you of my love”.
Don’t do that.
It’ll probably happen tbh
OH NO TOTALLY DO THAT. MrChouffe and I do that OFTEN and very frequently get Excellent Responses.
Obviously, you’re better singers than me.
That’s my Valentine.
You mean this? My co-worker does them – I could totally get you one.
http://www.redbubble.com/people/danpecci/works/20…
I wish I had an English boyfriend to whom I could give this.
My daughter and I were wandering around Target the other day singing “You’re gonna need Congressional approval and you don’t have the votes.” That also raises eyebrows.
Wonder how many times a day that line goes through Obama’s head.
1. BRB CANCELLING MY SPOTIFY PREMIUM TRIAL because it was honestly only being used to listen to Hamilton on long car rides and
2. I told my friend to listen to Hamilton and came back and found him listening to it on shuffle
“listening to it on shuffle”
Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat
Wait, his first time through? That sounds like a terrible idea. Why would you…???
I started listening to it by listening to, like, three songs. It’s doable.
I actually love listening to it on shuffle, because if I don’t have time to sit and listen to it all the way through, I’ll hear songs I just don’t get to all the time. BUT NOT ON THE FIRST LISTEN, JESUS
I inadvertently listened to the whole album on shuffle the first time through – I actually got to the end and thought ‘that was an interesting artistic choice, to do vignettes from his life out of order’ – then I looked at my iPod’s settings and realised what I’d done. It was great on shuffle, but then I listened in order and it was SO. MUCH. BETTER.
My darling, I’ve been meaning to listen but now because of you I’ve spent the entire evening home with the baby snapping turtle Mr. Barmaid and I are fostering singing “I’m not going to eat my WORMS…you’re just like humans/thinking I’m always hungry but I’m not going to eat my worms”
I am going to be attaching that rhythm to so much. It’s already started. I was doing it with something yesterday but I’ve forgotten what…
“advocate for free love and talk to ghosts.”
Sounds good to me
Like a a Victorian Kesha, right??
Every hardworking woman needs to have her hobbies. All patriarchy-smashing and no play can be stressful.
Guyyyyssss I’ve been so busy I haven’t been to the Toast in over a week and I finally come back and I’m gifted with Caity Weaver’s profile AND this gender-bias in medicine story. I feel so loved.
I’ve been absent most of this week, too. UGH indeed.
#ham4publishing
And the very best part about the gravitational waves discovery is that the embargo was broken with a picture of a celebratory cake
(note: this is the second time this researcher has accidentally done this via cake, but as she had said, embargoes are not made clear to all the researchers involved)
Pretty awesome cake, but I still think this is the best I’ve seen this week –
This was already a delightful wrinkle in spacetime the story, but the phrase “this is the second time this researcher has accidentally done this via cake” is going to carry me through the day today.
Ditto. That is the most delightful way to break any news embargo.
If I were a science journalist, I’d be cultivating a mole/handler relationship with someone at that bakery by now…
I can’t believe no one at the bakery spilled! I would have almost certainly told EVERYONE I KNOW if I was icing that cake.
That researcher could have been a little less specific and literal about the message they had put on that cake.
It could have just said, wavy gravy! In which “gravy” refers to gravity, of course.
I have been sitting on this secret for WEEKS and it has been KILLING ME and this person goes and cakewrecks it with wild abandon. They should FedEx me a slice pronto, to make up for it.
Wait, are you one of the scientists involved! If so, major congratulations on your extremely hard work! And you definitely deserve cake, even if you weren’t one of the scientists, just for having to keep that secret for so long.
Ha, I wish! I’m a communications person at one of LIGO’s partner universities. Usually, I know nothing so long in advance but they had to let me in on it to help prepare for the media hoopla. I don’t know if I like it–I’m in on a couple more big science secrets and it is against my very nature not to geek/gush with anyone.
A couple more? In that case, kudos to you, and here’s hoping science-headlines-via-cake becomes a trend.
I can’t stop giggling over the embargo being broken by cake. “I was like, yes, there’s cake at the coffee thing! So I tweeted it. That’s how we’d get people from other labs to come over, by telling them we had food,” Ryan said.
Ugh Toasties, I know I should save this for open thread but I never get to see that and I need to say to someone the mice are baaaack in my hoooouuuuse. We haven’t had any for ages, but apparently they’re back because the pest control guy just came round while I was working from home. So the issue is twofold: one, we have mice, and two, this is another thing I don’t like about house sharing, we get along fine, but someone saw a mouse in the kitchen and didn’t think to inform the rest of us? This house was fine when there was a gender balance, but now it’s mostly men no one ever fucking communicates.
Rant over, how about some waiting staff telling you about shitty Valentine’s Day customer? http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/waiters-tell-us-th…
Ugh, mice. Furry little parasite ridden bastards.
MICE ARE THE WORST. Our exterminator got rid of our problem with desiccating poison, because they were running about the attic and the walls, but staying out of the living area, where our cats could eat them, savvy bastards. Good luck with that, and also the non-disclosing roomies :S
I adore restaurant horror stories! And that first one happened to me, after a prominent local plastic surgeon chucked his first wife out for a younger, prettier, less perfumed model. But because their dates booked, we had NO IDEA and they were seated at tables next to each other. Mercifully I was not hosting that night, because some very swift changes were made to the seating plan 🙂
Srsly, tho, don’t take your loved ones out for dinner on VDay. Your food will be overpriced, your options limited, your server and kitchen staff run ragged and therefore not doing their best, and you will probably Not Have A Good Time.
I misread the first line of this as MEN ARE THE WORST and was coming down here to say YES, YES THEY ARE.
(Except Dads.)
I’m so glad my boyfriend’s birthday is the tenth. We do a thing then for both days and call it good.
MICE ARE THE WORST INDEED. We never had mice in our apartment. But then my super started keeping DOZENS of chickens in the courtyard/basement of our residential building in Brooklyn. There’s absolutely nothing illegal about this, except that CHICKEN SHIT ATTRACTS VERMIN. I’ve called the department of health, the management company, the super, all of them SO MANY TIMES and while they treat the mice, they do nothing about the “vermin attracting condition” of the chickens living in the basement. We’re pretty good about keeping the mice out of our unit, but I can hear them in the walls and the ceiling, and I can’t control my neighbor’s cleanliness. And when the renovated the apartment below mine, I think the mice got disturbed and now they’re back in my apartment. A mouse actually ripped up a book we had laying around–shredded it with its teeth–to make its nest in my walls. Someone asked how we’re spending our valentines day and I legit responding, “Uh, shoving steel wool and poison in every crack I can find in my pre-war apartment…” I FEEL YOU internet stranger. I FEEL YOU.
Get snap traps. Nothing else did a thing for us.
I… actually can’t finish the article on misdiagnosing women, because the description that opens it is what I’m going through RIGHT NOW (with the bonus distraction of me actually having ulcerative colitis). I haven’t had a laparoscopy yet, but it’s like they were so eager to find something wrong with any organ in my abdomen that’s NOT my reproductive system. It also reminds me of my childhood doc telling me that my trigeminal neuralgia is “psychosomatic” only to move, find new doctors, and be reassured that it’s so totally a thing and here have some better meds and now I can kiss my partner and eat crunchy food without pain usually.
But I’m so glad I’m seeing a new primary care doc soon. 🙁 It would be so nice to not have constant unending pain around my left ovary and uterus. It infuriates me how much we’re told that because we are women or are perceived as women, then we are imagining shit and should just stop being ~*hysterical*~ dear and calm down.
As a gyn provider I am sending you so many good wishes that the right combination of good providers, compassion, respect, and good medicine will bring you to a happier place.
On a totally more trivial level, but I was ENRAGED recently to see my GP with recurrent thrush only to be told ‘You can treat it, but it will probably come back because it’s one of those mysteries with lady parts’. A MEDICAL PROFESSIONAL seriously used that term. And laughed coyly. She (yes, she!) also failed to give any actual medical advice like, say, taking steps to treat my partner and prevent him passing it back to me, or trying a different type of OTC treatment to see if it responded better to that. Fortunately I mainly wanted to be sure that what I was getting repeatedly actually was thrush, and was able to think of these steps (which seem to have worked, btw) for myself. But oh, the rage. Maybe a little less embarassed laughing over the troubling mysteries of the female body and a little more actual medicine, hmm?
To add insult to injury, my trip to the surgery to get this ‘advice’ resulted in my getting the terrible flu that half the other patients were there with.
*shakes fist with rage on your behalf*
The only thing that worked for me was going religiously low carb for at least a month, combined with acidophilus capsules not taken orally. I cant remember which strains fight thrush, but there are evidence based reports that there are lactobacilli that do. Good luck, that is sooo miserable.
Ooh, good tips, thanks. If it makes a reappearance I will definitely try these (the degree to which I shudder at the thought of going super lowcarb probably reflects the degree of likelihood carb intake is a factor, heh).
Bread, wine, beer, mushrooms, all the delicious carbs… fruit with it’s easily accessible sugars. Sigh. Stupid thrush.
What worked for me wrt thrush was switching to only and ever using glycerin-free lube, and not getting glycerin anywhere near my vagina. That includes some bath bombs and bubble baths (curse you, Lush! you and your beautiful danger bombs!). I figured this out when I was living in Toronto, and was disgusted with Australian lube choices when I returned home, because now I can only find glycerin-free lube at sex shops and health food stores, but KY and such are in every pharmacy and supermarket.
Also, in Canada you can get Canesten and Diflucan and their antifungal friends off the pharmacy shelf, but in Australia you have to ask the pharmacist and sometimes get grilled on your sexual health.
Why are so many very useful medications over-the-counter in Canada and not, like the USA (or apparently Australia). They got Allegra OTC before we did. And they have a muscle relaxant OTC that works great for cramps as long as you don’t mind being sleepy.
What I use is capsules of boric acid (not the same thing as borax!) that I stick up there twice a day. I had to buy boric acid and capsules and I fill them myself, but it was insanely cheap. It re-acidifies the vagina, that’s all it does, but it’s enough to bring the bacteria etc. back into proper balance.
The best part (other than cheap, did I mention cheap?) is that rather than leaking greasy goo all day like with Monistat, I just have a little more discharge, and said discharge is watery. And it works within a day or two, tops, in my experience.
I’ve been lucky in that I’ve never suffered anything hugely serious, medicine-wise – but I just can’t quite get my head around how I’ve been going to GPs for years about really intense cramping with my periods, and in that time nobody thought to mention increased period pain can be a side-effect of anemia? Like the assumption that of course periods really fucking hurt, that’s just how they are (to the point that when i was 15, I was prescribed enzyme-blockers to prevent the cramping and allow me to stop missing school) was so strong that it never actually occurred to any of the GPs or nurses I saw to suggest that there might actually be an underlying cause that could be easily treatable???
I started taking iron supplements for anemia when it started to make me short of breath a few months back and lo and behold, my periods stopped hurting. Would’ve been nice if any of the doctors I saw over the last 6 years could’ve mentioned this link ( a nurse confirmed it to me when I ran out of supplements, didn’t get round to buying any new ones for a couple of weeks, and asked “is this maybe because i’ve been on my BC long enough to develop some immunity?” “lol no that’s most likely the anemia”)
Whew! Rant over! Thank you!
Nashirakins, I really hope your new doctor takes you seriously and that you can finally get this treated properly <3
I know it makes no sense but I think of Caity Weaver as the true-to-herself-but-kinda-awkward cousin who became a star! Like, ‘Thatz Not Okay’ always had sage advice, and ‘The Best Restaurant in NYC is… ‘ series was the kind of incisive journalism I love to read, and she went on a cruise ship with Paula Deen, and narrowly escaped death by mozzarella stick, and that was all cool.
But now she’s doing ridiculously excellent celebrity interviews in the glossy mags and she’s got her name in lights! For someone I’ve never met, I’m oddly proud of her. Fly high, Caity! You’re a star!
I’m so happy for her!! (and for me, because that means I can read gems like this: “Grown men now love Justin Bieber’s music, too,” reported the Associated Press somberly”)
Godddddd she has honed the tongue-in-cheek thing to an art. And also:
‘Then he begins by telling me it wasn’t in Tulum.
“I forget where it was. It wasn’t Tulum.”
It actually was in Tulum.
“The reason why I went there [n.b.: Tulum] in the first place was to go see those ruins. ‘
… I mean, gosh. I have little hearts in my eyes.
OMG SHE IS THE PAULA DEEN CRUISE LONGFORM LADY
brb reading everything she’s ever written
No, I know exactly what you mean and I totally agree! The first thing I read of hers was that state flag piece on the Hairpin ages ago, and I’ve been following her rise to internet dominance with total delight. I like her so much that I even forgive her for being my age and making me feel like an talentless failure of a human being.
Nicole, your love for the Eagles mirrors my own. No one I know understands, but YOU understand.
I had forgotten until just now that they were supposed to get a Kennedy Center Honor this winter, and they delayed it in hopes that Glenn Frey could be there next year. :'(
Oh Jaya. Oh Matt. Oh the heart-stopping feeling of when your crush logged into AIM.
I didn’t realize that Caity Weaver wrote that profile! I just went from “not interested” to “HOLD ALL MY CALLS*” in like 30 seconds flat.
Also, I’m extremely excited that my login finally started working again, after many months of being locked out! Hello again Toast!
*I don’t get any calls
Same — I saw the headline of the Beebs profile yesterday, had zero interest, then saw Caity wrote it and nearly broke my finger I clicked on it so hard! I have crushes on the people writing the articles far more often than the people being profiled lately.
In other news, today is my graduation ceremony, but I’m not attending for various reasons. Instead, I’ll be staying in; I’ll cook myself a nice meal, have a glass of wine or two and watch Netflix. I can’t shake a tiny feeling of regret, but overall I’m happy that I made this decision.
I didn’t go to my undergrad OR master’s graduation ceremonies. My mom is still bitter that she doesn’t have any pictures of me in a cap and gown; I could care less.
We don’t even have caps and gowns, so I’ll definitely won’t miss out on a “once in a lifetime photo experience”. All is well.
And funnily enough, if gowns and caps were involved, I’d actually reconsider going. Probably because growing up with American and British TV shows taught me that this is desirable.
Gowns let you flap around dramatically like Snape. I managed to get a really good billow going with my grad school gown.
My friends and I pretended we were Dementors after our BA graduation ceremony.
We should be friends and be Dementors together sometime.
Con-GRAD-ulations!
Sorry! It’s the worst pun in the world. Can’t help it. Your plan sound much better than sitting for three hours through a boring speech and a list of names.
Now that you’re saying it, I remember that there is not only a speech (or several?) but also a lecture by someone who just got his PhD, and these were always THE WORST, because they weren’t interesting. At all.
Graduations are overrated. And the bigger they are, the more overrated they are. The important thing is you made it and finished and got your degree!
Congratulations on graduating! Boring speeches are overrated anyway, good food & wine is far superior.
Congrats on graduating!!!
I tried so hard to get out of my high school graduation but I didn’t really have a choice in the end. The worse of it was that I couldn’t get my brother out of it, either. I didn’t have to go to his high school graduation and we tried to use that to get him out of mine but no dice. I didn’t really want to go to college either but I didn’t put up a fight for that one. I hated it and especially hated taking pictures with people I not longer care about but are nevertheless all over facebook, but I suppose it could have been worse?
Congratulations on graduating!! I didn’t go to my undergrad or master’s ceremonies, but to assuage my mom’s sadness I did take a picture of me wearing my friend’s cap & gown before the undergrad ceremony. (I was in a wedding that same day in another state, for which I had to wear a knee-length floral dress with white hose and white pumps. But that’s a weird story for another day.)
I convinced my parents that taking me to a fancy brunch would be way more fun and celebratory than going to my undergrad graduation. To this day, one of my greatest triumphs.
Congrats!
And you made the right choice. My parents did everything but drag me to mine by the hair, but I snuck a paperback under my robe and read during the speeches. I don’t think I missed much; I *did* win both the “gratuitous mention of Jesus Christ” and “gratuitous mention of 9/11” bets, so that was a cool ten bucks from my friend Mike.
Also our car got stolen during the ceremony, which I feel bad about feeling smug about, but there we are.
“Schembari also recommends actively seeking out doctors with a history of working with women and believing them.”
That’s great and all, but *how*? I have plenty of history with doctors who seem great until I hit them with something they don’t know much about or isn’t super easy to figure out, and then I get blown off. Sore throat that lasts for 2 years? Don’t know what to tell you! Serious unexplained weight loss? Huh, welp, see ya next year! Thumb joint that’s hurt for two years? Try not to use it!
I would love to find a doctor that believed me and was willing to work with me to figure out what is causing me problems, but I can’t figure out how. Just looking them up on doctor review sites isn’t helpful.
Legal threats?
Right? RIGHT?? I feel you times a million. If there’s any groups for chronic pain where you are, that’s how I got recommendations for a doctor who actually understood anything about what was wrong with me and believed me.
I’m so glad you found a doctor! I’ve found sites online for people with similar complaints about doctors but no suggestions, but I don’t think I’ve spent enough time on it. It’s pathetic that we have to spend so much time looking for a decent doctor, but you’re right, if I want a better doctor, that’s what I need to do.
I’ve been pretty lucky with doctors generally, but right now I go to a gp practice where all of the doctors have a sports medicine specialty, and it’s so great. They’re very invested in a definition of healthy that is more along the lines of “I can do what I want to do and my body is doing what I expect it to” rather than the “your body is functioning like an average person, this thing that you think is a problem isn’t one”
Heck, they take my injuries more seriously than I do sometimes- I had a glute pull that was slow to heal, and my doctor was ready to write the PT referral before I’d really come to terms with the part where it wasn’t getting better on its own (and the PT totally fixed things, too.)
Wow, that’s . . . not something I’ve experienced. Maybe I should look for something like that.
God, I love Caity Weaver. Her writing is a delightful gift.
Amen
Agreed! She’s in the pantheon of funniest writers, along with Mallory.
Nicole was tweeting a bit yesterday (probably like 80% in jest) about how these link roundups are pointless. I’d just like to reiterate here how much I love them and how much new and interesting stuff they bring into my life on a nearly daily basis. All of these links are gold.
Thank you for giving me the gift of slo-mo video of D’Angelo Russell’s nuts getting destroyed on this otherwise bleak Friday morning
Agreed! And there are also plenty of days when I just skim the links, but I’m really here for the conversation. It is all good and right.
Yes! Not only do I find out so much more than I ever would on my own, but I get to read all the lovely comments. I honestly don’t know how I’d get through work without the link roundup!
hear, hear
Just yesterday I went from never even having heard of Texas Monthly to falling down a veritable rabbit hole of Texas Monthly thanks to a) the link Nicole posted and b) the enthusiasm shown by other Toasties for the magazine. Toast tastes = bang on.
Texas Monthly is the best! As a Texan, I am obvs mega biased, but it is still the best.
Same!
Yay! Anything I’m addicted to I want to get everyone else addicted to as well, so this comment made my day.
This is the most reliable website for me to find things that are of interest to me that I’d never previously heard of.
I love them the same way I love twitter: they’re ephemeral and don’t necessarily make any sense a week later when the topic of conversation has moved on, but I remember having had great conversations.
Same. The link roundup is the first thing I look at in the morning and the one thing I must read each day.
Basically, Nicole is my information gatekeeper. Thanks, Nicole!
Seconded! (Or thirded or whatever at this point!) Link round-up is one of my favourite Toast articles and I look forward to it every day.
Link Roundup is the highlight of my dang day.
I was out in the Oregon wilderness these last few days and only got internet access during breakfast and dinner time. The Link Roundup was the #1 thing I spent that time on. You all are great, and Nicole and Mallory are especially great.
I mean, the vast, vast majority of work people do is not For The Ages, even if they are doing an extremely good job. Answering phones, waiting tables, flying planes, running a power plant, keeping accounts, selling shoes. Talking about the daily news of the Internet. That’s the stuff life is made of.
yes! i look forward to these link roundups every morning!
I love the round up. Back in the day when we used to email each other, we’d share these kind of random links to great writing and plain weird. Sharing a link on Facebook or whatever just doesn’t have the same intimacy. And I have no time these days with small people to pull together my, even if I say so myself, legendary “It’s Friday, it’s Polish news” missive.
Legendary because Polish news is awesome, just to clarify.
That crotch-ball video is literally the only thing that made me laugh today.
As always, Phil Plait has a very solid writeup that also has a delightful wow-gee-whiz! tone: http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2016/02/…
<3 bad astronomy!
Ooh! I was curious about how they detected it, but most articles don’t go into so much detail.
Thank you, that was super delightful!
I feel I am well qualified to discuss being struck in the testes. It’s always hilarious when it happens to someone else, and yet evokes a visceral response in every male onlooker. We’ve all been there, man.
Everybody has a solar plexus, and I think it’s instructive to compare it to that: getting a solid hit in the solar plexus make you think you’re going to die, but getting a solid hit in the testicles makes you want to die.
I confess I am a big fan of videos of smartass amateur golfers getting nailed in the junk with an ill-placed drive.
I once hit my bicycle brakes harder than I meant to as I was stopping, and proceeded to bring the weight of my body down onto my top tube via my clitoris. The experience has given me much more sympathy re: people getting hit in the testicles.
Google Now showed me that QC interview. I told Google Now, no, I am not interested in Justin Bieber. it disappeared. I went back in, it showed it to me again. No, Google Now, not interested.
…. I’m reading it now. Damn you. Damn you all.
o
m
g
“Bieber tells me excitedly that the car has been modified via the addition of a “custom-made Japanese body kit.” I ask him what a body kit is, and he describes it as “a body kit.” I am wary of tarnishing his luminous enjoyment of the car, so I stop trying to figure it out. He declares that the Ferrari looks “almost like Lightning McQueen,” which I assume must be a reference to a menacing manual-transmission two-seater driven around hairpin turns by Steve McQueen in a movie from the ‘60s, until I look it up and discover it’s the name of the car from Cars.”
I like to think I’m a relatively classy dame, but mercy, few things make me laugh more heartily than a shot to the nuts.
Throwing up also makes me laugh, I suspect it’s probably wrong, but boy oh boy do I giggle. It made me difficult to deal with when I was on vacation with my husband, he got some bad chorizo, and proceeded to throw up mightily for several hours. I swear on all things good in the world that I was caring and attentive to his needs even as I laughed my ass off.
No but seriously, this is like a superpower. Hearing or watching people throw up makes me panicky and ill, but I have children so I have to deal with it semi-regularly. Lucky!
Seriously. Janesy, are you a wizard?
Before you clarified the husband part, I thought you meant you laugh when YOU throw up, which I thought would be really uncomfortable. Kind of similar to laughing and hiccuping simultaneously. Air trying to go in and out at the same time is a weird feeling.
Barney’s film is by all rights a masterpiece, but Football to the Groin has a football to the groin.
Please tell me what your AOL screennames were in honor of Jaya’s article, everybody!
I was Grins10, then EClaire108, then TimeCollides, then CancelOprah, and finally GerrymanderThis.
Once I fiiiiiinally got to move off of the “family” account (Pplefam), I picked DaystarAquila and stuck with it.
Also, the aforementioned AOL screenname has now been immortalized in print as the name of a comic book character, so there’s that.
I’m preeeeetyy sure my first one was “Arabian2000” because the horse I rode at the time was an Arabian? Then I was….ohmygod “SwexyLLama” and then “SnakeXScandal” ? I don’t really remember after that. THANK GOD
I wasn’t on AOL, but I did have Apple Chat for a few years, and my name was TokiDoki65. Maybe it wasn’t called Apple Chat though? I feel like no one else used whatever chat software came with Macs.
xXPyroFaerieXx, elyse owns, party star elyse, elyse xx core
Because I was SO EMO omg
(who am I kidding, I still am)
Mmmmm “XxX” is SO important to the early aughts screen names. Various size xs, of course/.
[claps gleefully for this thread]
I was EsorYlime. And then EsorYlime2 when I lost the password (remember when password recovery was just, like, not really a thing?)
And I had a more anonymous chat-with-randos one called Bucket[some string of numbers]. AIM randos were such a mixed bag, right? (Why “Bucket,” younger me? I dunno, it just felt right.)
You guys, my one and only screenname was….wait for it…
ppyajunebug
Yes I’ve had the same online name since I was 13 why do you ask?
You are nothing if not consistent, my dear.
I JUST DON’T LIKE CHANGE, OKAY? UGH, YOU GUYS COULD NEVER UNDERSTAND
*slams door, cranks up The Ataris to an ear-splitting volume*
I’ve had the same email address/AIM username since I was 9, which is my initials plus my birthday.
I happily skipped the trying-to-think-of-cool-AIM-usernames phase.
Same! I have been Elsajeni in nearly all places since I got my first personal email address at age 12. (Actually, come to think of it, I did have other AIM screennames that I swapped in and out of to dodge creepy dudes, but I don’t remember any of them.)
I’m apey1013 on Twitter (*waves*) and I’ve been using that one since middle school. (Hence the X-Files reference.)
I’ve used a couple of different ones here and there, but I apey1013 is still my primary.
I have been very consistent, also!
Well, I was “kerista” until i learned it was a word for some sex-commune in CA and as soon as I could I transformed into “keristars” at age 17 because ewww dnw that association. (Also ‘kerista’ was my Pern RPG name when i was 12 and by the time I was 17 everyone just called me Keri so it wasn’t hard to tack on 2 letters when i needed a more unique name for my brand new LJ account)
YES! My people! I came up with protocoach when I was a youth (and I do not explain it’s origins anymore, because they are terrible youth reasons). And now my real name is virtually invisible on the internet, but “protocoach” has a 16 year history stretching across the web.
GirlLouie2 so everyone would know that my poodle Louie was a girl and later souperstar09 so everyone would know that I am witty.
DJGrrl83. Almost too cliche. DJ = initials. 83 = year of birth. Grrl = a 12-year-old pretending she has ever listened to Bikini Kill
WTPooh771 (for Winnie The Pooh, but with a ~twist~)
CarebearAF (I don’t even know if I liked carebears that much?)
Also, this question is the least terrible office icebreaker game!
the second one as “carebear as fuck”
Oh my god, I hadn’t even thought of that. THANK YOU.
How DID you mean it, though?? Because I also thought of it as “as fuck”.
Ha, fair question! They’re my initials! The realization that my initials can also be interpreted as “as fuck” is blowing my mind/opening up a whole new world of possibilities. Thank you, internet!
I’m literally giggle snorting in my cube RN about “Carebear AS FUCK” oh my god it’s the best.
kapow222 the whole time. It was a reference to an Incubus song which is perfect for 2001.
My first one was “imtheevilcucumber”
No, I have no idea why.
I think mine was MomeRath1967. I was fifteen, into Alice in Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass, and the Beatles. (1967 was the year Sgt. Pepper came out.) Shockingly, I was not also on any drugs.
And then at seventeen, well I discovered David Bowie and glam rock, I watched Velvet Goldmine and just changed it to JackFairy4, which is what it stayed until about the time that the collective hivemind of my friends all dropped AIM at the same time in 2009.
I’m surprised I never had a Velvet Goldmine-related name since I became obsessed with that movie right in the thick of my AOL/AIM years, but I did have a GIF of Brian Slade smoking a cigarette as my LJ icon for a long time.
Oh and on the subject of Jack Fairy, I can’t hear “Needles in the Camel’s Eye” without expecting to hear “That’s Jack Fairy!” and “Who’s Jack Fairy?” in the breaks in the guitar solo.
Ohhh, I probably had a whole bunch of Velvet Goldmine icons at different points over my Livejournal-having career. (My freshman year college roommate ended up making me one of Brian Molko that said “Theo” on it and that was my default for the rest of the time I managed to keep my LJ active, though.)
I might seriously have to watch Velvet Goldmine tonight now.
lotrhorses101
I liked lord of the rings… and horses
Perfectly sensible, in my opinion.
(I was inthenameoflove8. Because 1) the first seven were taken and 2) the first fanfic I ever read was named “In the Name of Love,” and it blew my mind in so many ways, and I also liked the U2 song. I was 12.)
Mine was “Ravalash”, which was my dad’s Dungeons and Dragons character from the 60s.
For some reason I have always defaulted to making some kind of portmanteau or pun out of my own first name (still in effect here, I guess). I was ursidancer when I first got on the internet and that eventually evolved to ursikai.
URSIDANCER
IT ME
Not AOL, but on other sites my screenname was “sarcastig” for…………….. way too long. (It rhymes with Hedwig you guys! It was totally clever!)
Come to think of it, my twitter handle is HedintheCloud, so clearly I have learned nothing.
Here are the ones I can remember:
green7710
amidala7710
relique
PentlandFirth
MyrddinsPrecinct
I had lots more, which I can’t remember at the moment……
amidala!!!
I was so so excited about the promotional materials for Episode 1.
: \
WE ALL WERE.
LordProtectorGuy… Lord Protector was the title Oliver Cromwell gave himself because he didn’t want to call himself a king and I guess I thought that was funny?
This is the best nerdy reason for a username.
My main one was weaselflame.
I also did a bunch of fandom RP on Livejournal back in the day, and I usually made an account for each character in case I wanted to do some IM RP as well. Unfortunately I can’t remember any of them, but believe you me they were witty as hell.
Psyche? Then Reneesance then Sage then Vendetta somewhere in there for a bit. 16 year old me was so dorky. Still use Reneesance for my business though. I cannot resist a pun based on my name.
One of my best AIM friends in high school had the screenname GatsbyDies.
Mine was hermionegirl127 (I think, it might’ve just been 27 or grl).
Hershey_girl (had a dog named Hershey), then glasscaseofemo, which was meant to be a reference and joke based on Anchorman, but was not very widely understood as such.
I don’t remember my own, but I know it was assuredly something very embarrassing. I do remember that, as all good teens did in the mid-2000s, my friend and I catfished our other friend for a while via aim. We created fake profiles and our usernames were those ones with AlTeRnAtInG caps and like angel love??? and a bunch of x’s and o’s, naturally. We pretended to be friends of his cousin from camp who saw his picture and thought he was cute. It was fun for the maybe 3 weeks we bothered to keep up with it.
Haymangirl I think. I didn’t really get into online chats until I was in college, my parents were not up on technology (and also I’m kind of old).
TwinkleToeShoes for a while there. A series of bastardized Italian names because I was in my opera singer phase. I changed the endings to feminine ones where applicable. So like “piccolo” and “sogno” because PiccolaSogna. *shame*
megtk22 (boring, factual) -> paper_thin_heart (DEEP) -> thephantommilk (~*~quirky)
The last one I definitely still use in various corners online, bc #brands
Yeah I’ve used catweazle for many years and considered changing at one point when I realized that nobody understood it was a reference to a ’60s children’s show about a wizard and all just thought I liked cats and weasels. But… it’s my brand now 🙁
SLCFleigh, combining my love of the movie SLC Punk! with one of my nicknames.
Wouldn’t it be amazing if two AIM users that lost touch long ago became reconnected on this thread! “Horsegirl83, is that you?!?!”
Pretty sure mine was something Star Trek related; I only signed up for the free month, since I was in a relationship with someone who was pretty controlling and thought that internet access was an unneeded luxury.
Potato1001, for reasons I don’t entirely remember. (I think I just liked the word “potato”?)
My first one was limited_2_girlie which at the time, I thought was awesome (so cool, because Limited Too was my favorite!) and now makes me cringe, because of my way too hard quest to Be Cool in sixth grade.
Thankfully, I stopped that nonsense and had changed it to my first initial and last name by eighth.
We never had AOL, but on AIM it was aprilstarchild79, because aprilstarchild was already taken (the only time I think that ever happened) and 79 is my birth year.
My friday was made infinitely better by this story about a Spanish civil servant who didn’t show up to work for 6 years and no one noticed until he was eligible for a long service award: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-35557725
“They said he did go to the office, although not for full business hours every day, and that he dedicated himself to reading philosophy.”
#LIFEGOALS
Thank you so much for posting that; it made my morning.
“They said he did go to the office, although not for full business hours every day, and that he dedicated himself to reading philosophy.” That man is a hero for the ages.
Also, can someone please make this into a movie? A charming, low-key-but-strangely-moving film about a quiet older man who finally realizes that none of his co-workers notice or care whether he is there or not, and who proceeds to take full advantage of the fact? Because I would watch the living hell out of that.
That would be a lovely movie. He’s quietly friends with the both the single mom across the way and her 12 year old daughter. The daughter gets his marked up copies of Plato in paperback and he regularly brings the mom homemade desserts. No romance ensues.
Yes! That is *exactly* the movie I want to see.
Can Emma Thompson play the single mom?
“no romance ensues” would make like 80% of movies better.
“he dedicated himself to reading philosophy”
HEART EYE EMOJI, guys.
Living the dream.
“Father forgive me for I have sinned. I did an original sin – I abandoned a monkey – a young monkey – in Germany.”
What sort of monster abandons an innocent primate!?
He didn’t have the proper papers, and so the monkey was confiscated by customs. They gave him four weeks to hand in the documents which he didn’t do – he probably thought this was a good chance to get rid of the poor monkey, just like people who abandon their pets in motorway restaurants.
(While this is obviously terrible, I also think it’s a very bad idea to give a 19-year-old a monkey as a birthday gift, so I kind of understand he didn’t want to deal with her anymore. But he definitely could have handled this better.)
That is an original sin! Five Hail Marys and two Hello Dollys.
But did you then poke a badger with a spoon?
Surprised that the article on devices making us less empathetic and Destroying Genuine Relationships that they don’t address one of the most valid points I think I’ve ever heard on the link between devices and less empathy: by socializing online, where we can curate who we talk to, we aren’t forced into talking with people who disagree with us or don’t see entirely eye-to-eye with us, so there’s no pressure of forming and maintaining relationships with people who you don’t get along with (unlike the Real World).
Obviously harassment, trolling, and lack of empathy are huge problems, but I am 100% done with articles that assume if I wasn’t on social media, I’d be out Forming Meaningful Relationships, as opposed to reading a lot more books and watching a lot more Netflix.
Which is both good and bad: like, I am absolutely here for not having to maintain a relationship with Racist Uncle Phil or his twenty-six-year-old dudebro equivalent.
And yes. I remember a bunch of whiny boys whining whinily about how nobody socializes on public transportation any more because smartphones, and I was like I am third-generation Bostonian and WE NEVER DID THAT.
And like, I never want to socialize with the people who want to talk to me on public transit! They are always men, mostly middle-aged or college, and want to tell me their Opinions! I don’t give two figs for their opinions!
I love my smartphone because now they can’t tell what book I’m reading from the cover and use it as a conversation starter.
Jesus yes. I’ve had one decent convo with a girl from Florida whose purse I admired (it had owls!) and otherwise? NOPE.
Total self-aggrandizing story: the latest Subway Guy’s come on was to ask if I was really reading “all that,” then, when I grunted at him, to repeat that, really, was I reading all that, then to say that he didn’t know how I could read all those sentences so fast.
At which point I looked up with my best descended-from-faculty-on-both-sides glare and said, “It helps when people don’t talk to me.”
He huffed a little and shut up. I stood up a stop later, as mine was next, and the nice older lady next to me asked if I was okay, which was both touching and amusing: oh, you are a sweetheart for asking, but oafs are neither rare nor alarming in my life, alas.
I’ll just leave these here…
http://vastderp.tumblr.com/post/104990633386/theq…
I’m always baffled by the argument that you talk to fewer “different” people online, but that might be because I grew up in the most homogeneous small town in the midwest (my high school graduating class’s greatest claim to diversity was that we had two Catholics), and I never got to talk to people with really different life experiences until I got online. And we have interesting conversations, because we got to know each other because we shared something we cared passionately about, and then our different life experiences led us to disagree about something, and we talked about it. Sometimes angrily, I admit. But we had the damn conversation. In real life, I frequently talk with people who I know have very different political views than I do, but we never talk about it, we dance politely around the topic, because no one wants to make someone else mad. I’m not saying that’s not a valuable skill, but I don’t understand how it’s more valuable than having meaningful conversations, which I at least have only ever had online.
Oh, that’s an interesting take on it. I have made loads of wonderful friends with a variety of opinions and life experiences online, but all of these friendships started out with something fundamental in common (a love of writing, being extremely geeky). So I had always viewed that “You meet more different people IRL!” thing as making sense–even though my online friends have had a lot of different life experiences, we automatically have a major passion in common.
Then again, I also lucked out with lots of IRL friends who are bookish nerds, and have had meaningful conversations both offline and on, so I am probably not the best example of “Real life relationships give you the skill of forming bonds with people with other life experiences.”
I’ve also seen the very valid rebuttal to that point about curating who we talk to: a lot of folks can’t curate the nasty, abusive, racist, etc, people out of their offline lives. One person’s filter bubble is another person’s safe space to be themselves. Disagreement with a sheltered or privileged worldview is one thing, disagreement with one’s existence is another.
Yes, absolutely. I’m not opposed to curating places online even if it *is* a filter bubble, honestly! I love my online friendships and the spaces we’ve created for ourselves. The argument I listed above was just the only one that’s ever actually given me pause in the endless thinkpieces about how Devices Destroy Us All. Speaking as someone who comes from a very sheltered and privileged worldview, I’m always looking for ways to look outside my bubble.
They’re the spiritual descendants of people who bitched about the telegraph and telephone back in the day.
Pretty much every friend I’ve made after college, I met via the internet (some I haven’t met in person and still consider friends, but an awful lot have become bonafide IRL meatspace buddies!); my amazing relationship with Beardo I owe to an online dating site; I have my job because I connected with a recruiter online; I have my apartment and roommates thanks to Craigslist; Facebook and video chats keep me connected to family far away and allow me to have a good relationship with my niece and nephew on the other side of the country; tomorrow morning I’m having brunch with some local Toasties, whose friendship I’ve cultivated via Twitter. So many wonderful relationships, and amazing people, and great opportunities, that I only have in my life because of the internet and social media and my computer and smart phone – I am so lucky to live in this world and have these chances! I’m old enough to remember very clearly what my life was like before all of this – lonely, mostly. I was 22 and living 3000 miles away from family and friends, working a quiet and isolating job, living alone, and totally miserable – technology changed that for me, and it’s really too bad the detractors can’t or won’t see those positives.
I literally have my current job because of someone I know through fandom whom I have yet to meet in person.
The NBA is my one true passion that rarely intersects with the Toast (most of my other things are more likely to come up) and Russell getting hit is not what I was expecting to see.
I will not be watching that happen, too painful to see, but this article about how 82 games is way too many for NBA players and why it is so bad for their bodies is really informative, even if one is more into sports science and sleep science than basketball itself. http://espn.go.com/nba/story/_/id/14757066/nba-sc…
Includes the factoid that NBA players travel more in their 82 game season than MLB players travel in a 162 game season.
Thank you for that article!! I heard about basketball’s too-long season on NPR, but I really enjoyed the deeper look at it. The pulmonary embolism stuff was especially fascinating, because I don’t think the average person/fan would think about it.
I’m more of a baseball fan, and don’t know more than a cursory knowledge of the NBA and its seasons, but I’m glad research like this is coming out to the public. I always thought MLB seasons were too long (6 months regular season, 1 month postseason, 2 months spring training, jesus) and would support shortening the seasons down to at least 140 games (as I believe they were in the past.) As for the NBA, perhaps a 60-game season with appropriate travel days?
That was super interesting to me, especially following the article last week about how many of the NBA’s tallest players end up dying in their late 50s/ early 60s (increased risk for all people over 6 ft plus stress of elite athletic competition is not great, unsurprisingly). I’m glad the NBA appears to be less in denial than the NFL about the impact of the game on their players’ health but it feels like even the “quick” fixes could go further (spread the season out another few weeks? No back to backs on road trips? ).
Oh man that article about tall players dying young is haunting. Just the title, “Larry Bird will die young. Just ask him.” is enough. http://espn.go.com/nba/story/_/id/14712117/larry-…
hm, I’m surprised NBA teams fly more than the NHL, too. You’d think the western canadian teams would add a lot of miles. I guess they do tend to do those road trips in big swings, so like, facing all those teams on one big road trip is less flying than Boston – Edmonton – Boston and then later Boston – Calgary – Boston, etc.
NHL schedule is very similar to NBA, as well- 82 games in <180 days. I guess there’s probably fewer back-to-backs? But they still happen. I guess I’d be interested to see a similar study of the NHL, for sure. Not that they’d change anything, because #grit and #toughness already means playing through injuries and fatigue and concussions, and getting praised for it, yknow.
Fewer back-to-backs, there’s usually a day in between NHL games, sometimes two. And that day is usually a practice day, if it isn’t a travel day.
yeah, the Bruins had FIFTEEN back-to-backs last year, and lost… a vast majority of the 2nd games.
I guess what I don’t know is how that actually compares to the NBA, but based on what the article said, it sounded like that was more of an issue for them.
re: the fatigue/trouble sleeping on planes etc., I also would like to know if the NBA has pre-game naps the way the NHL does.
Yay for Toasty NBA fans!
My team (the Portland Trailblazers) actually travel the most out of every other NBA team since they’re so isolated from the rest of the franchises. I’m convinced that’s why they are constantly battling injuries that take longer to heal. I also really dislike back to back games and I think most basketball fans would be more than happy to have a slightly longer season to avoid them.
Re: gender-biased diagnosing, I’m interested in the fact that women doctors seem to be guilty of it as frequently as men. I’m guessing part of that is internalised misogyny, plus also general burnout – when docs are overworked and have to deal with some really challenging patients with mental health problems, addiction issues etc, they can become cynical about *any* patient that seems to be ‘difficult’ (not a simple diagnosis, complicated issues, not responsive to treatment etc). Still wrong obvs, but somewhat more explicable.
I remember having a good discussion on here about emotional burnout in the medical profession; would you guys agree that women doctors displaying misogyny could be part of that general burnout? Or does it have other causes?
An important thing to realize is that not only do women providers have internalized misogyny but we are also educated and trained in a system that endlessly reinforces these ideas that certain problems are less serious just because they do not have an obvious physical cause.
I’ve said this before (in that other thread, probably) but I have to literally verbally remind myself multiple times a day to take all my patients 100% seriously. (“Trust women,” I remind myself when I notice I’m starting to feel incredulous or intellectually-superior. *)
* And that’s another thing! It’s so easy to feel like “I know more than you about gynecology so I can tell that what you’re describing isn’t actually a THING, you just think it is.”
Yes! I think a lot of providers jump straight to the “I know more than you about gynecology so I can tell that what you’re describing isn’t actually a THING, you just think it is.” part, and don’t have your self-awareness to question their own knee-jerk assumptions. I can understand that feeling – it is annoying when people act like they know more about your job than you. But medicine is different because while the health provider’s expertise is extremely valuable, people are also experts on their own bodies and experiences.
Can we talk about this Ask A Manager tho:
http://www.askamanager.org/2016/02/low-performers…
Wow, wait, what the actual…? Dunce caps. No.
It isn’t a dunce cap, it’s a party hat with the word dunce on it! Fun party times!
the thing that gets me is the size of that company! How can that many people buy into the culture? I wonder how many have brought it up with higher-ups, especially in a “this might be harassment” sense. Or whether there’s just high turnover because wtf.
My good friend works at a consulting firm that ranks employees publicly, I thought that was bad enough….
Pretty sure I worked there too. Past tense.
Is it the firm that holds secret/not-so-secret consensus meetings to forced-bell-curve rank everyone on a 5-point scale while they aren’t allowed to be there but have a randomly assigned “counselor” who speaks on their behalf?
Because that was the worst.
Alison’s response is perfect! I kind of wonder whether she (and we) are being trolled. Surely nobody would put up with this?!
If the workplace is 350 people there must be an HR department in which case I have so many questions for them.
I read that and was horrifically reminded of one of my old workplaces. We didn’t have dunce caps, so I guess it wasn’t quite as bad, but you could tell that if the CEO (or the CFO, who was his mother) thought they could get away with stuff like that, they would’ve.
ok, I usually read “we rely on devices too much” articles in a defensive stance, but I noped out of this one quick after reading We wouldn’t be always clutching smartphones if we didn’t believe they made us safer, more productive, less bored, and were useful in all of the ways that a computer in your pocket can be useful. followed by a whole section on how they ruin our social interactions without a word about how they ARE FOR SOCIAL INTERACTIONS. WITH FRIENDS. Safer? More useful? No, it’s full of photos of cats and funny things my friends’ toddlers said.
(I do see worrying stuff in articles like this about child development, and I really don’t have much basis for judging what’s alarmist or not in that area, like, what’s The Kids Are Different And We Don’t Get It vs This Stuff Is Messing Kids Up.)
We wouldn’t be always clutching smartphones if we didn’t believe they made us …less bored,
hold on, they definitely actually do that though
My number one example of this is always the difference between being stuck at a restaurant waiting too long for the food/a table. I can remember what that was like pre-smartphones. Everyone would get super bored, run out of shit to say, and just stare off into the distance in growing irritation. Then, the rest of the night’s conversation would be about how terrible the service was.
Now? Now, everyone can whip out a dang phone and read articles or look things up or share photos (and thus bring up more conversation) or check and see if that other dinner guest is on their way, etc. By the time you eat and leave, everyone is less irritated than they would have been, in better spirits, and talking about something other than the service.
Agreed! Smartphones have made restaurants much less awkward for me.
I’m also one of those people who brings a book when I eat out alone (I am a young Asian woman in America, I am sick of men trying to start conversations at me when they see me alone) and my smartphone is lovely because I can carry my entire library without straining my purse.
Of course phones make us less bored. You can debate how good or bad it is, I guess — I suspect it has good points and bad points, but I don’t feel that “less bored while waiting in an office/for a plane/etc” is really a horrifying change.
Some uses are definitely preferable to others. I use my phone and ipad as e-readers, which is a decidedly nice function. The maps app on my phone is helpful when I’m walking around places I’m unfamiliar with. I like using my ipad to watch YouTube videos while I eat my lunch. People having super loud phone conversations EVERYWHERE is not pleasant. People being addicted to Candy Crush is kind of terrifying.
On the particularly frustrating side, one of my best friends is completely incapable of putting his phone away when we spend time together. If we’re hanging out and he gets a text, he can’t not look at it. Then once he looks, he starts looking at his emails, and his friends’ facebook/tumblr/twitter feeds, and then some link from one of the tumblr pages, and so on. It makes me batty. If we set aside time to do stuff together, then let’s spend the time interacting with each other. It feels so rude to me.
I get what you’re saying. I’ve been around people who can NEVER put the phone down and it drives me up the wall. And I’ve heard the loud conversations and the game theme music that they don’t mute, etc. But plenty of those people would have found some other way to be annoying pre-smartphones, too. I’ve been riding public transportation my whole life and people have always been annoying.
And your other comment: I totally use my tech as e-readers, too. One of the best things I think I’ve gotten from that is that I read more long-form articles and a greater variety of them. Instead of reading a couple of specific magazines a month, I’m reading tons of articles from many different publications. And by having them “with me” all the time, it’s much easier to put them down and pick them back up later when I have time to finish.
Yes, I love never being bored waiting in line, but I’m a believer in interacting with the people you are with. And the addictive nature is a bit scary–when my watch battery was dead and I was using my phone instead, I’d pull it out to check the time and then get lost in email/toast comments/whatever without realizing what I was doing.
Yes, those people are very frustrating. But also, as a child, I would often visit friends houses and then start reading their books instead of actually interacting with them. So I’d say these people have always been around, it’s just easier for people to be impolite now (I am much better these days about both phones and books while with friends).
Likewise – I took books with me everywhere I went and when we visited family friends I would frequently just sit by myself with a book.
Up until I was practically in college, family holiday parties meant hiding with a book in some unused room and only darting in to grab a plate for dinner, then vanishing like a ninja in a velvet dress. (When I was *super* young, it was hiding behind a large chair or under a sofa.)
I miss those days.
I still do this and I’m 42.
Oh, but don’t you remember the days before the Phone came to rule us all, when, down to a person, every one of us spent our time in the waiting room Sitting in Mindful Meditation?
I have blocked those horrifying pre-rapture times out of my head, just like the back and shoulder pain from carting around 50 zillion books because I don’t know what I will want to read next.
Oh yes! If I didn’t have a smartphone, I would absolutely be having Meaningful Conversations with strangers on the bus during my commute! That was what people always did before, right??
Oh, yes, the options on the bus definitely weren’t “bring a book” or “look out the window or at the ads and despair.”
I have so far failed to obtain a smartphone, and am definitely not living any sort of mindful, engaged life in which I interact with those around me. I always have a book with me and I just read that, or stare aimlessly into space ignoring people. Once I went to the post office without a book (ROOKIE MISTAKE) and spent 45 minutes in a queue with nothing to do. It was agony.
(Even when my partner and I are out together we will sometimes pull out our books and read rather than talking to each other. The people who think phones are the problem are fools.)
Seriously, I hate the thought that if my partner and I were sitting in a cafe both immersed in books, people would be looking at us thinking “What a nice pair of nerds!” but if we are reading the same books on our Evil Devices, people are (I assume/imagine) thinking “What a pair of mindless sheep!”
I know! We could be reading immensely trashy books, or something deep and meaningful on a phone. You don’t know. Interacting with your phone rather than with people is not necessarily any different to interacting with a book rather than people, and I have been doing the latter since I learned to read.
Right! Plus, before smart phones, you’d just…bring a book, right? That’s why doctor’s offices had magazines and airports had trashy books and all?
I always, always, always carried a book with me. My first rule for purses was that they had to be big enough to carry a paperback. Alas, no longer a requirement!
Yep! Still is in my case, but I just got the smartphone, so that may change. I read quickly, too, so the number of books I carried–particularly when I was young and always being dragged to places I didn’t want to be–was a family joke.
You know what else they definitely do is render you helpless to navigate while driving when you lose cell service. I’m a little amazed there aren’t just cars piled up on the shoulders of every road that reaches the edge of reception.
yeah, I see a lot about how we’re losing the ability to read maps, and that is a little scary! I also remember navigating by map, and if you ended up on an unfamiliar road with nowhere to safely pull over to look at the map, or no street sign to figure out where you were on the map, or if your friend lived in a new development that wasn’t on your year-old map, you were ALSO screwed. So we’re helpless now, and we were just late a lot with no way to tell people we were running late then…
Yeah, I had a minor freak out this summer when I was driving to a friend’s house in very unfamiliar territory, pretty late at night, and my phone was close to dead. I was like, if this thing dies I truly won’t know how to get to there. I could have found a gas station or something if I really needed to get help, but it was a major realization of how dependent I am on my phone.
I have a US road atlas in my car for the simple reason that a friend left it there after a road trip and said she didn’t need it back. I also have a map of the Chicago area, and both of those have saved me a couple times now from similar situations.
Usually they live forgotten behind a seat, but it’s been pretty awesome when we run out of cell service and I can say, “Wait! I have a MAP!”
GPS is amazingly useful but I love paper maps on both practical and nostalgic/romantic levels. I love being able to look without having a particular destination in mind.
Indeed! One of my favorite pastimes is poring over maps and wondering what it would be like to go there.
There’s something bigger too about how some GPS apps only show you the line to where you are going, and a map shows you the whole area. I have *always* been prone to getting lost (so before smartphones I just…wasted a lot of time being lost) and I rely on my phone pretty heavily, mostly for finding a nearby bus. When I’m taking transit I like to look at the zoomed-out view so that I can see the whole route at once and actually understand the “where” of where I am. On the occasions when I drive and use the more zoomed-in driving-direction apps like Google Maps, they creep me out–the kind where all it shows is the next few hundred feet of the road you’re on and some text to indicate your next move. It feels like I’m in a tunnel and the phone is my only light to lead me out.
I’ve tried using Google Maps to give real-time directions on my bike, and I’ve found it to be kind of a disaster. (On one memorable occasion it kept telling me to “turn left” while I was stopped on a sidewalk facing the street looking at an impassable bunch of cars leaving a football game, desperately trying to figure out which direction the app thought was “left,” since I’d already tried what I thought was the correct route and it led to a dead end.) For biking there’s really no good substitute for knowing where you are.
I’m really glad I learned to navigate my city by bicycle pre-smartphone. I owned a big plastic-y bicycle route map put out by a local government agency and would plot out my routes and scribble them down on something smaller, and even then I usually kept the map in my bag to consult. I sometimes still ask google maps for bicycle directions and I’m like, “no, that’s a stupid route.”
I have a London A-Z streetmap for when I’m going somewhere new and don’t want to get lost. It is so useful.
While walking, I’ve been waylayed a number of times by an older person in a car who needs directions somewhere. I don’t know whether they don’t have maps, don’t know how to read maps, or just don’t feel like looking at a map, but getting lost and needing directions is certainly not something that can be laid at the feet of GPS.
This is one of my grudges against South Carolina. There are no street signs anywhere. Ever.
(But yes please, Low Country food??)
Also Boston. And the street signs that do exist are often behind trees, and slowing down to look at them will get That Guy honking and tailgating behind you.
I am dependent on my GPS and proud of it. If I lose service, I’ll keep going until I get somewhere that has service and figure life out then, and maybe write down the directions that time. But honestly it doesn’t happen a lot.
YES! Having moved here in fall of 2014, the lack of street signs at all intersections has not ceased to perplex and infuriate me.
I didn’t figure out how to read maps until I got a smartphone, actually. It really improved my ability to decode the little signs and figure out relative position and direction via landmarks. Back when it was all paper maps I’d be turning and turning the thing trying to figure out which way was up, when I should have been finding landmarks near me on the map and orienting from there.
I printed out the phone addiction article to read on the train ride home. $10 I instead spend the entire commute scrolling through Twitter for hockey recaps and Instagram for puppies, puppies, puppies.
the pink tongue of Sansaaaa
“Justin Bieber makes eye contact like a person who has been told that eye contact is very, very important.”
That plus an utter confidence that he knows what God means?
*Shudder*
I read Justin Bieber as Jeb Bush, questioned nothing, and should really start eating a better breakfast.
I’m smelling future mega-church pastor.
Remember the discussion about the CDC guidelines on booze? Rebecca Solnit slays it, as usual http://lithub.com/rebecca-solnit-the-case-of-the-…
This is brilliant. Thanks for linking.
I admit that my first reaction to that infographic was ironic Toasty glee at the implication that you can get pregnant just by drinking — no more men! the CDC has discovered the secret of parthenogenesis! (Parthenovinogenesis)
But Solnit is so great:
“Maybe the CDC should cut to the chase and issue warnings about men. After all men are the main source of violence against women (and for that matter the main source of violence against men). Imagine the language! Use of a man may result in pregnancy or injury; men should be used with caution. Assess each man carefully for potential risks. Be careful about using men with alcohol.”
“In the current extremes of anti-abortion advocacy and enforcement (like the cases of women prosecuted for trying to produce miscarriages), women have no value in relation to the fetuses in their wombs, though about half of those fetuses will turn into women who will, in turn, be assessed as having no value in relation to the next potential generation of fetuses. Women may be worthless containers of containers of containers of things of value, namely men. Embryonic men. Or perhaps children have value until they turn out to be women. I don’t know. It’s a mystery to me how these people think.”
perfection
YES. Thank you so much for sharing this!
Okay but can we write a pop culture celebrity profile without an elaborate description of what they happen to be eating today?
But chicken fingers are a window to the soul!
Sounds vaguely similar to The Grub Street Diet, which is sometimes extremely disappointing, but occasionally incredibly entertaining (check out the Rich Sommer one).
http://www.grubstreet.com/tags/the-grub-street-di…
Maybe this is where I say that I can’t look at dudes getting hit in the balls. I always cringe and flinch in sympathy but I don’t even have those outside bits. I guess they just look like they are in a lot of pain and this makes me cringe.
Slightly related and a dog story as well, my brother in law has a dog who is like a muscle bound tank of a dog and he very enthusiastically greets everyone. First time I met him that dog jumped up and punched me right in the crotch with his huge paw. Even though my bits are inside that still hurt quite a bit. Now when I see him I angle slightly to deflect his enthusiasm.
My bestie’s black lab is a crotcher. One day when I went over I made a point of putting a book in my bag and using it as a shield, and the dog’s nose made an audible “bonk” when he connected with the book.
This has not lessened his enthusiasm for a friendly crotchin’, though.
*reflects on Sansa’s fluffiness for the rest of the day*
That Turkle review has certainly not given me positive feelings for Turkle, and I was pre-disposed to be sympathetic. Bah.
I have never been so antsy for a Friday open thread before, so I will post this here and then hopefully again there (I have a lot of meetings today). Any Toasties going to Katsucon in National Harbor this weekend? I’m planning on being there all day tomorrow and Sunday, and maybe tonight depending on when I leave work. I’d love to meet up if anyone will be around!
They have a whole con for katsu?
That would be delicious, and I don’t think anyone attending the real Katsucon would object. Sadly, it is just a regular ol’ nerdcon.
A delicious con of katsu is my new headcanon.
“The sisters immediately used their earnings to start an investing firm, Woodhull, Claflin & Co. They were Wall Street’s first female stockbrokers; the sign on the door of their offices read, “Gentlemen will state their business and then retire at once.””
^ Excellent
“Gentlemen will state their business and then retire at once.”
God damn, that is appropriate for my cubicle, and dare I say every woman’s workplace.
“Gentlemen will state their business and then retire at once.”
Can I get this worked into some sort of decorative plaque/wreath situation for the front door of my apartment, pretty please?!
Through that Justin Bieber piece I found Caity Weaver’s “10 Haunting Questions I Have After Watching My First Star Wars Movie”, which perhaps you have all already seen but, okay, seriously:
“The applause when we first reconnect with Harrison Ford, a 900-year-old wisecracking man, and his beautiful long-haired wife, Chewbacca, was rapturous.”
http://www.gq.com/story/10-haunting-questions-i-h…
That was wonderful. Thank you.
That was great.
This Bieber profile, MY GOD, so good. “He speaks more quietly than a mouse who is asleep.”
This is a national treasure.
“Can you tell me anything about the day you were born?”
“March 1”
That Bieber article is just so weirdly fascinating. Really well-written, and interesting — I didn’t want to read it because Bieber and yet I’m fascinated by it because Bieber.
On his relationship with God: “It just gives me some sort of hope and something to grasp onto, and a feeling of security, and a feeling of being wanted, and a feeling of being desired, and I feel like we can only get so much of that from a human.” — this is always something that concerns me with religious views — because religion should not be a sort of perennial get-out-of-jail free card that continuously excuses you from deliberate wrongdoing or douchebaggery. Forgiveness is real, but using religion as a way to perpetuate wrong-doing, with the knowledge that you can make yourself feel better about yourself — that’s always problematic to me.
I relate so hard to instant messaging allowing you to be a bolder, more put together person.
YEP.
Asynchronous communication is the BEST!
Victoria Woodhull is yet another historical woman I’d love a biopic of.
I see Justin Bieber has been watching 30 Rock because that chicken fingers thing is definitely a patented Jack Donaughy power move.
Now I’m picturing the interview taking place with him seated on a throne (his feet dangling) and her seated on a beanbag, sinking ever deeper while she stretches her tape recorder toward his mouse-voice.
I thoroughly enjoy the juxtaposition of the Jaya article and the Sherry Turkle article
The AIM article is lovely. (I feel weirdly invested in Jaya and Matt’s relationship considering we have never met.) I had MSN rather than AIM, but a lot of the stuff in the article rings true to me; I have, somewhere on my computer, loads and loads of Word documents with conversations copied and pasted in. I have never dared to reread them. My MSN friends were mainly people I had met on other message boards and developed friendships with. One girl lived on the other side of the world from me, but we talked to each other about our mental health and made an “anti-suicide pact” with each other. One person was a boy my age who I had a ridiculous crush on; one night he said he had something important to tell me and I messaged my female friend in a frenzy of excitement, wondering if he might be going to say he liked me (he was not). On another message board, I made some relationships that got very close and weird (we lived near each other, so met IRL several times) and the board slowly imploded due to teenage girl drama; I still have records of the chats from around that time. It was such a big part of my life that I haven’t really thought about in years.
Ugh women being blown off by doctors is something I can't believe we still have to experience! It's such a fight to convince others you know your own body, don't doubt yourself!
The ENT suspected silent reflux based on my description of my symptoms (cold-like symptoms after drinking or big holiday meals, antibiotics having no effect) and confirmed by putting a scope through my nose down my throat – from there she could see the damage was coming from my esophagus and not my sinuses. I had no associated stomach issues, so my GP never suspected it.
wait, does this benefit the clinic/LNP/doctor more when you pay out of pocket? i thought that they got paid either way. i'm really curious about this!
Thank you, that was super delightful!
We should be friends and be Dementors together sometime.
She charges me a sliding scale because I pay cash. She charges a higher rate when she bills insurance. But my insurance deductible was so high (and I had no chance of meeting it unless I had a major health issue) that it was cheaper for me to just pay cash. That she lets me do so is very generous of her and I know it!