Good Reads

[gravyrug]

http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/cockblocked-by-redistribution

Roosh enjoys middling success as the author of the “Bang” series of travel guides, which trains readers to seduce women based on derogatory ethnic stereotypes. In Bang Brazil, Roosh warns his followers that “poor favela chicks are very easy, but quality is a serious problem.” He vows never to return to the Polish city of Katowice unless forced to “maintain the pussy flow.” Roosh’s predations haven’t gone without recognition. The Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil rights organization, included Roosh’s personal blog in a March 2012 report on American hate groups; it quotes an Icelandic feminist group that described Bang Iceland as a “rape guide.”

But Roosh’s Denmark directory diverges from his usual frat-boy Casanova fantasies liberally seasoned with rape jokes. Don’t Bang Denmark—note the dramatic title change—is a cranky volume that (spoiler alert!) probably won’t help any Roosh acolytes score. Roosh calls it the “most angry book” he’s ever written. “This book is a warning of how bad things can get for a single man looking for beautiful, feminine, sexy women.”

What’s blocking the pussy flow in Denmark? The country’s excellent social welfare services. Really.

 

[Laurel]

The federal government is shutting down on Tuesday and will stay closed until Congress can reach an agreement on how to fund day-to-day operations. So who gets hurt most by the shutdown?

Everyone's heard that the panda cam at the National Zoo will power down, but that's hardly the most serious consequence of a shutdown. The biggest disruptions are less visible — the workers going without pay, the patients turned away from research clinics, and so on. Here's a rough list:

http://25.media.tumblr.com/a6c480d481e679b5d4ba52a491819caa/tumblr_mu0hfrllhV1qbbesyo2_r1_500.png​

- read the full article The nine most painful impacts of a government shutdown (from The Washington Post)​

 

[JohnnySavage]

The federal government is shutting down on Tuesday and will stay closed until Congress can reach an agreement on how to fund day-to-day operations. So who gets hurt most by the shutdown?

Everyone's heard that the panda cam at the National Zoo will power down, but that's hardly the most serious consequence of a shutdown. The biggest disruptions are less visible — the workers going without pay, the patients turned away from research clinics, and so on. Here's a rough list:

http://25.media.tumblr.com/a6c480d481e679b5d4ba52a491819caa/tumblr_mu0hfrllhV1qbbesyo2_r1_500.png​

- read the full article The nine most painful impacts of a government shutdown (from The Washington Post)​

And they turned off the panda-cam

 

[trysail]

The federal government is shutting down​

http://www.USDebtClock.org

If something can't go on forever,​

it won't.​

​

 

[Laurel]

http://eatwithjoe.files.wordpress.com/2010/02/frito_pie.jpg

Anthony Bourdain has corrected a factual mistake he made in his assessment of New Mexico's beloved local dish Frito Pie on the most recent episode of Parts Unknown. Bourdain said the dish — chili served in an open bag of Fritos at Santa Fe's Five & Dime General Store — was made with "Canned Hormel chili, and dayglo orange cheese-like substance." The Associated Press reports that the restaurant makes its chili from scratch. Bourdain's spokesperson tells the AP: "He admits that 'we got it wrong' about the chile ... And we'll try to correct it for future airings." Earlier reports from the AP call Bourdain a "famed taster" and don't have comment from Bourdain or his team.

Though Bourdain described the Frito Pie in the episode as feeling "like you're holding a warm crap in a bag," he also said the dish was "delicious." In a statement published by the AP, Bourdain says: "Contrary to the impression left by some reports of the show, I, in fact, very much enjoyed my Frito pie in spite of its disturbing weight in the hand. It may have felt like (expletive) but was shockingly tasty.​

- read the full article Bourdain: 'We Got It Wrong' About New Mexico Frito Pie (from Eater)​

 

[JohnnySavage]

Anthony Bourdain's next show/series should include me as his side-kick. We could travel the world and eat interesting things as I make witty observations.

 

[Laurel]

Anthony Bourdain's next show/series should include me as his side-kick. We could travel the world and eat interesting things as I make witty observations.

If you get the job, let me know. I'll watch!

 

[Laurel]

I don't have much to say about the latest tempest in a teapot over the non-literal use of "literally." It started, as such things often do these days, on Reddit, where a participant in the /r/funny subreddit posted an imgur image showing Google's dictionary entry for "literally" that pops up when you search on the word. The second definition reads, "Used for emphasis or to express strong feeling while not being literally true." That was enough for the redditor to declare, "We did it guys, we finally killed English." As the news pinged around the blogosphere, we got such fire-breathing headlines as "Society Crumbles as Google Admits 'Literally' Now Means 'Figuratively'," "Google Sides With Traitors To The English Language Over Dictionary Definition Of 'Literally'," "I Could Literally Die Right Now," and "It’s Official: The Internet Has Broken the English Language."
[...]
I've previously shared my thoughts on "literally" here on Language Log in a 2005 post discussing a piece on Slate by the OED's Jesse Sheidlower, as well as in a Word Routes column in 2008 ("Really! Truly! Literally!"). If I were pressed to find a silver lining in the latest round of hand-wringing, it would be this: many people are now learning about Frances Brooke, the novelist who is responsible for the earliest OED citation for the hyperbolic sense of "literally," from 1769. I first dug up the citation for the 2005 Language Log post, and it eventually worked its way into the OED's 2011 revision:

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/~bgzimmer/literallyoed.jpg

​

- read the full article Frances Brooke, destroyer of English (not literally) (from Language Log)​

 

[Laurel]

http://www.texasmonthly.com/sites/default/files/styles/story_hero/public/stories/images/1013_Journal_680x382_0.jpg

There are a dozen sit-down toilet stalls in the New Braunfels Buc-ee’s men’s room. On a recent Sunday, all of them were occupied, door locks slid to red, even as a good number of urinals—and there are 33 to choose from—went unmanned. The convenience store’s facilities are different from almost every other men’s room in America—not because they’re huge, and not because they’re busy (although both those things are true), but because elsewhere, stalls are usually a last resort. At Buc-ee’s, which prides itself on restroom cleanliness, men use the stalls because they can.

“The Top Two Reasons to Stop at Buc-ee’s: Number 1 and Number 2,” reads one of the company’s many roadside billboards. While there’s no shortage of relief options along Interstate 35 between Dallas and San Antonio, the New Braunfels Buc-ee’s is the reigning champion of the annual “America’s Best Restroom” contest, held by bathroom and service supplier Cintas.

As another sign boasts, these are “Rest-rooms You Have to Pee to Believe.” The men’s urinal area has 28 privacy-walled white Kohlers, and there are 5 more in the stall area. Each urinal is numbered for clean-up purposes (“We need a quick mop under number seventeen!”) and, like each stall, has its own Purell dispenser. All told, the men’s room has eight sparkling sinks, twelve always-humming automated EnMotion towel dispensers, and nine Buc-ee’s beaver–logoed pink-gel-soap dispensers (not to mention six additional public Purells). The floor-to-ceiling stall dividers eliminate the kind of, er, crawl space present at airports, and with four double-rolled dispensers of toilet paper beside each toilet, you’d never have to pass a roll between them anyway.​

- read the full article Holy Crap: Inside America’s best men’s room. (from Texas Monthly)​

 

[Laurel]

http://www.slate.com/content/dam/slate/articles/arts/cool_story/131001_COOL_WhatCoolMeans.jpg.CROP.promovar-mediumlarge.jpg


Last month the electro-psychedelic band MGMT released a video for its “Cool Song No. 2.” It features Michael K. Williams of The Wire as a killer-dealer-lover-healer figure stalking a landscape of vegetation, narcotics labs, rituals, and Caucasians. “What you find shocking, they find amusing,” the singer drones in Syd Barrett-via-Spiritualized mode. The video is loaded with signposts of cool, first among them Williams, who played maybe the coolest TV character of the past decade as the gay Baltimore-drug-world stickup man Omar Little. But would you consider “Cool Song No. 2” genuinely cool, or is it trying too hard? (Is that why it’s called “No. 2”?)
[...]
The standard bearers, however, have changed. Once the rebellious stuff of artists, bohemians, outlaws, and (some) movie stars, coolness is now as likely to be attributed to the latest smartphone or app or the lucre they produce: The iconic statement on the matter has to be Justin Timberlake as Sean Parker saying to Jesse Eisenberg as Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network, “A million dollars isn’t cool. You know what’s cool? A billion dollars.” That is, provided you earn it before you’re 30—the tech age has also brought on an extreme-youth cult, epitomized by fashion blogger and Rookie magazine editor Tavi Gevinson, who is a tad less cool now at 17 than she was when she emerged at age 11. What would William S. Burroughs have had to say about that? (Maybe “Just Do It!”)

Cool has come a long way, literally. In a 1973 essay called “An Aesthetic of the Cool,” art historian Robert Farris Thompson traced the concept to the West African Yoruba idea of itutu—a quality of character denoting composure in the face of danger, as well as playfulness, humor, generosity, and conciliation. It was carried to America with slavery and became a code through which to conceal rage and cope with brutality with dignity; it went on to inform the emotional textures of blues, jazz, the Harlem Renaissance, and more, then percolated into the mainstream.​

- read the full article Cool Story: What does "cool" even mean in 2013? (from Slate)​

 

[Laurel]

http://d1435t697bgi2o.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/features-foster-8.jpg

TODAY, FOSTER-CARE POLICY tends to be leveraged on the assumption that a family structure best serves a child’s interests. Ideally, that would mean biological parents or relatives. But even a substitute family is considered preferable to (and more cost effective than) a group home. To be sure, research shows this is true for very young children.

San Pasqual, a non-profit that can serve about 180 kids, exists because families fail. And when teenagers are involved, families tend to fail most spectacularly. The academy believes teenagers should bond with a community of their peers and a group of adults rather than be folded into a series of potentially dysfunctional families. The concept can be reduced to a simple truth: There is no time. There are more than 60,000 foster children in California alone, and it can take years even to try to rehabilitate troubled biological parents or family members, or find stable adoptive parents.

For kids stuck in the churn of the national foster-care system through their teens, prospects for adulthood are bleak. Almost 60 percent of those who age out of the national foster-care system wind up unemployed, and more than 20 percent of young people who arrive at homeless shelters come directly from foster care. According to the Brookings Institution, 80 percent of males who have been in long-term foster care, and 57 percent of females, have been arrested at some point (compare that to 17 and four percent in the general population).

“The foster-care system is pernicious,” says retired family court judge Jim Milliken, one of the founders of San Pasqual Academy. “It’s damaging for the kids that stay too long. The vast majority of them end up with bonding disorders. They get psychological damage from never having a secure, permanent place.”​

- read the full article What If the Best Remedy for a Broken Family Is No Family at All? (from Pacific Standard)​

 

[Laurel]

New research suggests reading literature increases our ability to pick up on the subjective states of others.

http://d1435t697bgi2o.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/reading-fiction.jpg

Beach reading season is over, so it’s time to plunge into some serious fiction. But if the idea of plowing through a Pynchon feels a bit too much like work, here’s a piece of news that may inspire you: Doing so may help you better discern the beliefs, motivations, and emotions of those around you.

That’s the conclusion of a just-published study by two scholars from the New School for Social Research in New York. David Comer Kidd and Emanuele Castano report that reading literature uniquely boosts “the capacity to identify and understand others’ subjective states.”

Literary fiction, they note in the journal Science, “uniquely engages the psychological processes needed to gain access to characters’ subjective experiences.” Unlike most popular fiction, which “tends to portray the world and its characters as internally consistent and predictable,” these works require readers to contend with complex, sometimes contradictory characters.

According to Kidd and Castano, this sort of active engagement increases our ability to understand and appreciate the similarly complicated people we come across in real life.​

- read the full article Literary Fiction Helps Us Read People (from Pacific Standard)​

 

[Laurel]

http://www.newstatesman.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/fullnode_image/articles_2013/201339sport.jpg

The conventional image of women in Nazi Germany is well known. In what was a very masculine world, women generally appear either as hysterical, weeping Hitler fanatics or as hapless rape victims, reaping the Soviet whirlwind. Some readers, however – those familiar with the execrable concentration camp guards Irma Grese and Ilse Koch or perhaps with Bernhard Schlink’s novel The Reader – might recognise a third stereotype: that of the woman as perpetrator.

Hitler’s Furies, a new book by the American academic Wendy Lower, brings this latter image to a non-specialist audience. Distilling many years of research into the Holocaust, Lower focuses her account on the experiences of a dozen or so subjects – not including Grese and Koch – ranging from provincial schoolteachers and Red Cross nurses to army secretaries and SS officers’ molls. Despite coming from all regions of Germany and all walks of life, what they had in common was that they ended up in the Nazi-occupied east, where they became witnesses, accessories or even perpetrators in the Holocaust.

Lower is scrupulously fair to her subjects, providing a potted biography of each, explaining their social and political background and examining the various motives – ambition, love, a lust for adventure – that propelled them to the “killing fields”. This objectivity is admirable, particularly as most of the women swiftly conformed to Nazi norms of behaviour, at least in turning a blind eye to the suffering around them. One woman, a Red Cross nurse, organised “shopping trips” to hunt for bargains in the local Jewish ghetto, while another, a secretary, calmly typed up lists of Jews to be “liquidated”, then witnessed their subsequent deportation.
[...]
Despite these horrors, Lower’s book resists the temptation to wallow in emotive rhetoric; nor is it drily academic. She writes engagingly, wears her considerable erudition lightly and has opted to stick with a broad narrative account, comparing and contrasting but never allowing her analysis to outweigh the fundamental humanity of the stories. The book’s power lies in its restraint.

Neither can Hitler’s Furies be imagined as some sort of Woman’s Hour rereading of the Holocaust. There is no special pleading for the subjects and the gender studies aspect of the book is kept well within bounds. Indeed, in analysing the women’s progress from nurses and secretaries to accomplices and perpetrators, Lower is at times eager to emphasise that the forces that drove and shaped them were in some ways the same forces experienced by Germany’s men – the seductive appeal of Nazism, the heady lawlessness of the occupied eastern territories and the “new morality” of the SS.

It’s worth remembering here that many of those women who committed crimes could not resort to the time-worn excuse that they were “following orders”. They were not. They were merely reacting and adapting to their surroundings.​

- read the full article Hitler's Furies: German Women in the Nazi Killing Fields (from The New Stateman)​

 

[Laurel]

http://www.believermag.com/issues/201310/img/article_ghansah.png

Chappelle didn’t seem to understand that these rumors of drugs and insanity, though paternalistic, were just the result of disbelief and curiosity. Like Salinger’s retreat from fame, Chappelle’s departure demanded an explanation: how could any human being have the willpower, the chutzpah, the determination to refuse the amount of money rumored to be Chappelle’s next paycheck: fifty million dollars. Say it with me now. Fifty. Million. Dollars. When the dust settled, and Chappelle had done interviews with Oprah and James Lipton in an attempt to recover his image and tell his story, two things became immediately apparent: Dave Chappelle is without a doubt his generation’s smartest comic, and the hole he left in comedy is so great that even ten years later very few people can accept the reason he later gave for leaving fame and fortune behind: he wanted to find a simpler way of life.​

- read the full article If He Hollers Let Him Go: Searching for Dave Chappelle ten years after he left his own show (from The Believer)​

 

[lovetoread]

http://www.wweek.com/portland/imgs/media.images/10629/news_casadiablo2.widea.jpg

The manager at the McDonald’s on Northwest Yeon Avenue glanced at the money in the customer’s hand, a $2 bill that looked as if its edges had been dipped in blood. He grew tense, shook his head and turned away.

“Oh, no,” he says. “We’re not allowed to accept those.”

McDonald’s employees had seen the mystery money before—crimson-stained, smeared, always $2 bills—as have food carts, bars, retail stores and other businesses across the Portland area.

The bills have amused some people and alarmed others, who aren’t sure if the stains come from real blood, if the cash is counterfeit, or if the bills were marked by an exploding dye pack during a bank robbery gone wrong.

Thousands of these tainted bills are in circulation around the city, but their source is no longer a mystery: They’re a marketing gimmick for Casa Diablo, a Northwest Portland strip club that is taking U.S. currency and smearing it with blood-red ink.

Casa Diablo has made headlines in Portland for its vegan menu and its successful battle against local opponents to open a second club on Southeast McLoughlin Boulevard.

Johnny Zukle, the club’s manager, says he’s the one red-inking the bills—which are legal tender—to suggest they’re stained with blood. He says he wants the strip joint to remind patrons of the vampire-infested cantina in the 1996 Robert Rodriguez film, From Dusk Till Dawn.​

- read the full article Blood Money (from Willamette Week)​

I think it's funny that people still don't get that $2 bills are real money.

 

[Laurel]

I think it's funny that people still don't get that $2 bills are real money.

I love them! I collect them whenever I find them because they're cool. When I'm old and gray, I'll spend them all at once on something. It'd be fun to walk into a store with nothing but $2 bills.

 

[Laurel]

In 1932-1933, while working on what would become his first published novel, Tropic of Cancer, Miller devised and adhered to a stringent daily routine to propel his writing. Among it was this list of eleven commandments, found in Henry Miller on Writing — a fine addition to these 9 essential books on reading and writing, part of this year’s resolution to read more and write better.

http://www.brainpickings.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/henrymillercommandments.png
​

- read the full article Henry Miller’s 11 Commandments of Writing & Daily Creative Routine (from Brain Pickings)​

 

[crazychemgirl]

finally finished Game of Thrones book 5...

I'm reading Gillian Flynn - Dark Places .. really enjoying it thus far. She's a good writer. I really liked Gone Girl.

 

[Phelia]

http://media.salon.com/2013/10/seida_viral_photo-620x412.jpg

I logged onto my Facebook one morning to find a message from a girlfriend. “You’re internet famous!” it read. She sent a link to a very public page whose sole purpose was posting images that mock people’s appearances. There I was in full glory — a picture of me dressed as my hero Lara Croft: Tomb Raider for Halloween — but written over the image were the words “Fridge Raider.”[...]

And of course, they hadn’t really thought of me as a person. Why should they? These images are throwaways, little bursts of amusement to get through a long workday. You look, you chuckle, you get some ridicule off your chest and move on to the next source of distraction. No one thought about the possibility that I might read those words. Far less, that I would talk back.[...]

I got a fair number of them taken down, but once something like this spreads, it’s out there forever. Friends still send me emails asking if I know about this, and I can hear the anxious balancing act in their voices, trying to be a good friend and alert me to this danger while still trying to shield me from the hurtful attacks. I still go through the less tasteful side of the Internet monthly and issue take-down notices for new instances, but it’ll never be completely gone, which is part of why I decided to post the image in this story. On my own terms. To own it again, without shame this time.

- read the full article My Embarrassing Picture Went Viral (from Salon)​

 

[lovetoread]

I wish everyone who's picture has gone viral could fight back.

 

[Laurel]

http://media.salon.com/2013/10/seida_viral_photo-620x412.jpg

I logged onto my Facebook one morning to find a message from a girlfriend. “You’re internet famous!” it read. She sent a link to a very public page whose sole purpose was posting images that mock people’s appearances. There I was in full glory — a picture of me dressed as my hero Lara Croft: Tomb Raider for Halloween — but written over the image were the words “Fridge Raider.”[...]

And of course, they hadn’t really thought of me as a person. Why should they? These images are throwaways, little bursts of amusement to get through a long workday. You look, you chuckle, you get some ridicule off your chest and move on to the next source of distraction. No one thought about the possibility that I might read those words. Far less, that I would talk back.[...]

I got a fair number of them taken down, but once something like this spreads, it’s out there forever. Friends still send me emails asking if I know about this, and I can hear the anxious balancing act in their voices, trying to be a good friend and alert me to this danger while still trying to shield me from the hurtful attacks. I still go through the less tasteful side of the Internet monthly and issue take-down notices for new instances, but it’ll never be completely gone, which is part of why I decided to post the image in this story. On my own terms. To own it again, without shame this time.

- read the full article My Embarrassing Picture Went Viral (from Salon)​

Good for her.

 

[Laurel]

http://b-i.forbesimg.com/susanadams/files/2013/10/eye2.jpg

Most of us think that when we want to make a point, we should look the other person in the eye. Spouses, bosses, car salesmen, politicians, all use a direct gaze when they’re trying to convince an audience of many or one that their position is the most valid. Now it turns out that they should probably cast their glance in a different direction.

Julia Minson, a psychologist and assistant professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government who studies group decision making and negotiations, and her longtime collaborator, Frances Chen, a psychologist and assistant professor at the University of British Columbia, realized that no one had studied this piece of conventional wisdom—that staring at someone will make the person more likely to see your point. Until now, most of the academic work has focused on what Minson calls “lovey-dovey contexts,” like mothers and babies gazing at each other (which cements their bond) and potential mates meeting one another’s gaze (also enhancing their connection). But when it comes to persuasion, academics have really only looked at interactions from the perspective of speakers, who almost always feel they are getting their point across if they are making eye contact.

In a new paper just published in the journal Psychological Science, Minson and Chen tested the proposition that eye contact can win over people who disagree with the speaker. In two different studies (conducted at the University of Freiburg where Chen was doing her post-doctoral work), their data show that people respond more favorably to opposing arguments when the speaker looks at an angle to the recipient or focuses his eyes on his counterpart’s mouth instead of his eyes.​

- read the full article The Power Of Eye Contact: It's A Myth (from Forbes)​

 

[JohnnySavage]

The interesting part of that is (as I recall from somewhere in the depths of my memory), in the animal kingdom, direct eye contact is seen as a challenge. A dominate animal will stare down the submissive one. It would follow, that when you are trying to convince someone to agree with your position, you shouldn't make eye contact, which would subconsciously be seen as a challenge.

 

[Laurel]

The interesting part of that is (as I recall from somewhere in the depths of my memory), in the animal kingdom, direct eye contact is seen as a challenge. A dominate animal will stare down the submissive one. It would follow, that when you are trying to convince someone to agree with your position, you shouldn't make eye contact, which would subconsciously be seen as a challenge.

True. I never thought of it in those terms, but it makes sense.

 

[RobDownSouth]

The interesting part of that is (as I recall from somewhere in the depths of my memory), in the animal kingdom, direct eye contact is seen as a challenge. A dominate animal will stare down the submissive one. It would follow, that when you are trying to convince someone to agree with your position, you shouldn't make eye contact, which would subconsciously be seen as a challenge.

You've been on the Pickup Artist forum again, haven't you?