"Writing is work, and that work deserves payment in Our Capitalist Society. So we just thought, “Yeah, let’s pay everybody,” and if it failed, it failed."
Most people understand cryonics to be the freezing of bodies after death, and they're mostly correct. Cryopreservation stores biological material at an incredibly low temperature for use at a later date. The main goal of cryonics is to preserve brain functions before it's undergone irreversible damage in the hopes that technological advancements will be able to revive it in the future. This requires quick action once the heart has stopped, not to mention a relatively…
My friend M is a virologist who works for a biotech firm where it's their job to tend the robots. Last fall they completed FemSexNYC, “a sexuality workshop rooted in an anti-oppression framework for all gender identities.” Needless to say, we talk a lot about the boundaries between technology and humans and about sensuality and sexuality. Recently, we spoke by phone about robotics and erotics.
Grace Bello recently interviewed Melissa Gira Grant for The Toast. This post was brought to you by an anonymous victim of misandry.
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The late cultural critic Ellen Willis was best known as the first pop music critic for The New Yorker. But in her forty-year career as a cultural critic, she covered a wide range of subject matter including feminism, countercultural politics, religion, family, and freedom for publications…
Jen Doll, who you have almost certainly read and enjoyed in your online wanderings, has given the world of wedding attendees a charming and appropriate gift in the form of Save the Date: The Occasional Mortifications of a Serial Wedding Guest. So we talked about it! Hi Jen! I read your book on the plane, and I always love your writing but, you know, it's about going to weddings, so I was pleasantly surprised…
A drug dealer and a dating coach, both somewhat down on their luck, meet in New York and party together before heading to Los Angeles and getting drawn into a world of gurus, tantric sex and hallucinatory spiritual ceremonies. So kicks off Be Here Nowish, a Kickstarter-funded comedy web series by Alexandra Roxo and Natalia Leite. The pair — who have made music videos, commercials and Vice mini-documentaries with their studio Purple Milk —…
"Whore is maybe the original intersectional insult," writes journalist and former sex worker Melissa Gira Grant. In her new book Playing the Whore, part of a series by Jacobin writers published by Verso Press, she explores the sex industry from the perspective of the workers themselves. That includes strippers, porn performers, and prostitutes, whether they work on the street, in clubs, or even at home as independent porn performers. What she found was unnerving:…
After Leah McGrath Goodman of Newsweek revealed the true identity of Bitcoin inventor Satoshi Nakamoto this morning, we here at The Toast realized her reporting, while excellent, left out the real story -- namely, Nakamoto's involvement in the international train modelling (or TraiMod) community. Two weeks before our meeting in Temple City, I struck up an email correspondence with Satoshi Nakamoto, mostly discussing his interest in upgrading and modifying model steam trains with computer-aided design…
Tumblr is absolutely crammed with food blogs, from recipes every hour to ones that only focus on pretty food. But then there's Fucking Recipes, a uniquely foul-mouthed food blog that calls its readers "TALENTED AND MAJESTIC WARRIORS." Reading Fucking Recipes is like perusing a cookbook from an alternate universe where Julia Child has been reincarnated as a benevolent Viking, urging you towards your most fabulously death-metal self. (Sample quote from a post musing…
Imagine you want to hash out the singular genius of Breaking Bad with a fellow fan. You mention the show to a friend or co-worker; they stare blankly back. The next person also shrugs. No one has even heard of Breaking Bad. Now you are sweating a bit and re-thinking reality. How could so many people not know this cultural gem? Yes, thank you. Now you know what it is to be a Maria Bamford…
Before I became a blogger (?!?), I read Rachel Shukert's first book, and thought it was so funny and great that I sent her my very first fan email, and she wrote back, and I thought I was hot shit, and since then I have observed her career with great pleasure. After publishing her second book, in which she's crap at travel and men, she transitioned into YA, and wrote STARSTRUCK, set…
Solace Ames and Suleikha Snyder are both writers of erotic romance in their thirties. Suleikha is known for her Bollywood romances with Samhain Publishing, and Solace Ames has a series of BDSM erotic romances coming out with Carina Press. They’ve been writing and playing the erotic field for several years. Solace Ames: Suleikha, how did you come to be a romance…
I like to think that there are a fair amount of things about me that are notable. My refusal to wear socks until it snows. My obsessive love of cleaning out the lint trap and making tiny lists. One thing people tend to hang onto, though, as soon as they learn it about me, is that I don’t want to have kids. It’s pretty rare, apparently, for people I know to come upon a woman…
Weetzie Bat (Indiebound | Amazon) first came out in 1989, but something about it sticks in my consciousness like it was published last week -- and I know I’m not alone in this. It’s not an easy book to explain to the uninitiated, but mention the series to believers, and no matter how long it’s been since they read the book, they’ll reply with a certain reverence usually reserved for cathedrals, Paris, coffee, or…
